In vitro wear assessments of fixed and mobile UHMWPE total knee replacement

This work discusses the wear behaviour of two different ultra-high-molecular-weight-polyethylene tibial component designs. Mobile and fixed bearings were tested on a knee wear simulator for 5 million cycles using bovine calf serum as lubricant. We correlated the wear results with the chemical characterisation of the investigated materials: Fourier Transformed Infra Red Spectroscopy analyses, Differential Scanning Calorimetry and cross-link density measurements were used to assess the chemical features of this polyethylene.