FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF KNEE IMPLANTS MANUFACTURED BY FDM TECHNOLOGY

Resumo

Knee prostheses are used in knee replacement surgery in patients who have or develop some
type of disease in this joint. The prostheses currently on the market have the femoral component in a
metal body and have been used for many years. Problems of metallic implants such as patient sensitivity,
adaptation to existing models of prosthesis and cost of prosthesis are some of the factors that influenced
the study of non-metallic prosthesis materials. The finite element method will be applied in the study of
prostheses made in 3D by Fused Modeling Deposition (FDM) in ABS and PLA materials, and its
orthotropic nature will be evaluated. In order to achieve this objective, the prosthesis was modeled
graphically, in which the load and boundary conditions to simulate the activity of an individual walking
with the prosthesis were applied and the Tsai-Hill’ and Tsai-Wu’ failure theories for composite materials
were used to evaluate the functionality of this prosthesis. Thus, several results are obtained, such as
failure index and strain rate for these materials.