Wear and Contact Stress Studies of the Minns Meniscal Knee Prosthesis

Abstract

This paper describes the results of wear testing and contact area studies of a Minns meniscal knee prosthesis and compares the results of previous work on wear and contact stress studies of other knee prosthesis designs.

Although stresses that arise at the surface of the polyethylene meniscus components are large, after repetitive loading the contact area rises, as a consequence of plastic flow and creep, and they reduce to a fifth of the initial stress after 1 million cycles. Contact area studies show that asymmetrical loading of the meniscus give proportionally high stresses on the higher loaded meniscus and, at large values of flexion, have similar values to a more conforming but fixed polyethylene tibial component design of knee prosthesis.