Notch Fatigue in UHMWPE

CPG researcher Adam Kozak co-authored a Journal of Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials article. Along with co-authors from UC-Berkeley (Ansari, Gludovatz, Ritchie, and Pruitt), these researchers investigated the sensitivity of ultra high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) to fatigue when stress concentration sites are present in the form of notches. The authors investigated 3 formulations of UHMWPE commonly used in hip or knee implants today, and found that the sensitivity to crack propagation resulting from fatigue was more sensitive to microstructure, such as crosslink density, rather than specifics of the notch geometry.