Dynamical experimental study of friction and wear behaviour of bovine cancellous bone sliding against a metallic counterface in a water lubricated environment

This paper aims to evaluate the friction and wear behaviour of bovine cancellous bone/steel contact pair. It was intended to represent orthopaedic applications, such as the hip protheses joint, in which steel components may contact against bone. A pin-on-disc tribometer PLINT TE67/HT was used to study the effect of sliding distance, sliding velocity and contact stress on the friction coefficient and wear of cancellous bone. The experimental plan was set on Taguchi’s techniques and the obtained results treated by the analysis of variance (ANOVA). The chosen array was the L27 (313), with 27 rows and 13 columns at three levels. The obtained results show that friction coefficient is independent of experimental variables. The sliding distance exerts the greater effect on the cancellous bone wear. The interactions between selected variables are statistically insignificant on the wear of cancellous bone. In a post-test examination, bone samples were observed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis and energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) X-ray microanalysis.