The Determination of Abrasion Resistance of Selected Biomaterials for the Friction Pairs in the Hip Joint Endoprosthesis

The key requirement for the modern endoprosthesis is high durability of the friction components, which results in long and trouble-free operation in the human body. The durability of currently used endoprosthesis is often limited by tribological wear processes of friction components (e.g. between the head and the acetabular component in a hip joint endoprosthesis) [8, 19, 23, 24]. In order to compare the tribological wear, tribological tests were carried out by means of tribometer on friction pairs of the following composition: implantation steel 316 LVM/PE-UHMW and titanium alloy Ti13Nb13Zr/PE-UHMW. Determining of the friction coefficient, measured profiles of surface roughness and microscopic observation allowed to evaluate the abrasive wear of the tested biomaterials.