Material selection for femoral component of total knee replacement using comprehensive VIKOR

The increasing trend of total knee replacement (TKR) revision surgery, which is associated with aseptic loosening, makes it a challenging research subject. The concern of loosening can be partially improved by selecting the optimal materials for TKR components. Therefore, this paper considers selection of the best material among the set of alternatives for femoral component of TKR through the multi-criteria decision making approach. The comprehensive VIKOR method was used to select the optimum material, and a systematic technique for sensitivity analysis of weights was introduced to find more reliable results. The obtained ranking order suggested the use of new materials over the existing ones. Porous and dense NiTi shape memory alloys were ranked first and second respectively.