ABSTRACT
Over the years, the number of hip arthroplasties has increased significantly, and the literature indicates that the number of new cases, in the coming decades around the world, will continue to grow. There are several factors that lead to failure of the implant, one of the most critical being the phenomenon of stress shielding. This phenomenon is responsible for triggering the process of bone resorption as a result of the change in the typical stress field to which the bone is subjected after insertion of an implant. The main objective of this work was to analyse the bone remodelling process in the surrounding bone tissue after the insertion of a femoral implant, combining a material law of bone tissue recently developed by Belinha, and three numerical discretization methods: Finite Element Method (FEM) and two meshless methods— the Radial Point Interpolation Method RPIM and Natural Neighbour Radial Point Interpolation Method (NNRPIM). The results obtained allow to conclude that the algorithm of bone remodelling used accurately predicts the main and secondary trabecular structure. Finally, comparing both numerical methods, it was possible to observe that the RPIM and NNRPIM meshless methods produce smoother stress fields when compared to FEM, which corroborates the literature. The results presented in this work, shows that meshless methods provide a viable and reliable alternative to the FEM, with respect to biomechanical problems.
