Modelling evaluation of the testing condition influence on the maximum stress induced in a hip prosthesis during ISO 7206 fatigue testing.

In vivo fatigue failure of hip prosthesis stems has been extensively reported in literature. The ISO 7206 international standard has been developed to assess the fatigue reliability of hip prostheses. It describes the fatigue testing apparatus and procedure and it is currently adopted by several testing laboratories throughout the world. In this work we evaluate the maximum stress in a titanium alloy commercial stem in different testing conditions, ranging within the standard specification, using the finite element method applied to a 3D model of the stem. The calculated maximum von Mises stress ranges from +4.5 to -1.5% (for different cement constraint levels) and from +6.7 to -6.8% (for different stem angular orientations) with respect to that calculated at the nominal testing conditions. The results suggest that the ISO 7206 testing specification will give experimental data of reasonable accuracy, with probably no more scatter than that found in typical specimen test results. This is particularly important in the case of components manufactured from materials showing a fatigue resistance highly sensitive to stress variations, such as the Ti6A14V alloy, for which a small increase of the maximum applied stress corresponds to a significant decrease of the statistical fatigue life.