The frictional heat generated during the operation of the joint prosthesis in vivo could change the corrosion resistance of the prosthesis material. In this paper, the corrosion behavior of three medical alloys at different synovial fluid temperatures was analyzed using electrochemical measurement technology. Furthermore, the scanning electron microscope and energy‐dispersive spectrometer were used to characterize the surface morphology and composition of the alloys after long‐term immersion. The results show that increasing temperature causes the open‐circuit potential of titanium alloy to shift negatively and the corrosion tendency to increase. The increasing temperature leads to the decrease of activation energy of titanium alloy, which in turn results in the increase of corrosion current density and accelerated corrosion. The results of Nyquist curves confirmed that the radius of the capacitive arc decreased with the increase of temperature, indicating the deterioration of corrosion resistance. The CoCrMo alloy shows the same regularity as the titanium alloy in 0.9% NaCl, though no obvious regularity in 25% newborn bovine serum; this may be related to the complexity of the corrosion system.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to systematically study the dynamic contact stress, frictional heat and temperature field of femoral head-on-acetabular cup contact pairs in a gait cycle. Design/methodology/approach In this paper, four common femoral head-on-acetabular cup contact pairs are used as the research objects, mathematical calculations and finite element simulations are adopted. The contact model of hip joint head and acetabular cup was established by finite element simulation to analyze the stress and temperature distribution of the contact interface. Findings The results show that the contact stress of the head-on-cup interface is inversely proportional to the contact area; high contact stress directly leads to greater frictional heat. However, hip joints with metal-on-polyethylene or ceramic-on-polyethylene paired interfaces have lower frictional heat and show a significant temperature rise in one gait cycle, which may be related to the material properties of the acetabular cup. Originality/value Previous studies about calculating the interface frictional heat always ignore the dynamic change process in the contact load and the contact area. This study considered the dynamic changes of the contact stress and area of the femoral head-on-acetabular cup interface, and four common contact pairs were systematically analyzed.

Disc brakes are the most widely used key components in the braking system of various types of machinery and equipment. When it works, it converts kinetic energy into thermal energy, which will make the braking interface overheat, thus leading to thermal recession of the brake disc and brake pad, which will eventually seriously affect the service life of the machine. The study of temperature changes at the working interface of disc brakes during braking is of great significance to the selection of brake friction pairs and the setting of braking parameters, and is an important theoretical guarantee for improving the service life of brakes. Currently, there are extensive researches on the analysis of temperature fields at the working interface of disc brakes. This paper summarizes the latest numerical research progress of the friction interface temperature field of disc brakes, and evaluates the research status of the friction interface temperature field model, temperature field solution method, and thermodynamics. The review finds that the current numerical method has become the most common method for conducting thermal analysis of disc brakes. The finite element analysis based on thermal modeling, thermal-mechanical coupling methods, and temperature distribution is able to provide more research basis for studying the thermal failure of brake friction pairs, thermal damage mechanisms, and friction material wear mechanisms. Improving the accuracy of the thermal model calculation will be an important research direction for the future numerical analysis of the temperature field of disc brakes.

In order to investigate the effect of frictional heat on the wear resistance characteristics of polymeric acetabular materials, the tribological tests and wear numerical analysis of three common polymer acetabular materials were carried out under different synovial fluid temperatures. The study results show that XLPE and VE-XLPE exhibit superior wear resistance compared to UHMWPE in high-temperature, heavy load environments. The coefficient of friction of three materials gradually decreases as the temperature of the synovial fluid increases. The wear depth and wear volume of the three materials increased with the increase of the temperature of the synovial fluid, and the forms of wear at 46°C and 55°C were mainly adhesive wear and plastic deformation. The higher temperature of the synovial fluid accelerates the oxidative degradation of the material surface and generates oxidation functional groups, which leads to the breakage of C-C bonds in the surface molecular chains under the sliding shear effect, thus reducing the mechanical properties of the material. Specifically, the surface of the polymer material will soften at a higher ambient temperature, mainly due to the decrease of hardness, and then deteriorate in the friction property, and finally increase the wear rate. Ansys results showed that the volume wear of the three materials increased with the increase of synovial fluid temperature, and the trend could be approximately linear. Numerical calculations predict that VE-XLPE has the highest wear of 0.693 mm3 among the three materials at 37°C, followed by XLPE at 0.568 mm3 and UHMWPE with the lowest wear of 0.478 mm3. At higher synovial fluid temperatures (46°C, 55°C), VE-XLPE still has the largest wear volume among the three materials, while XLPE and UHMWPE have similar wear. The wear cloud pictures showed that the maximum wear volume occurred near the edge of the acetabulum.

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