Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present the methodology of a design process of new lumbar intervertebral disc implants with specific emphasis on the use of rapid prototyping technologies. The verification of functionality of artificial intervertebral discs is also given. The paper describes the attempt and preliminary research to evaluate the properties of the intervertebral disc implant prototypes manufactured with the use of different rapid prototyping technologies, i.e. FDM – fused deposition modelling, 3DP – 3D printing and SLM – selective laser melting. Design/methodology/approach – Based on the computed tomography (CT) scan data, the anatomical parameters of lumbar spine bone tissue were achieved, which were the bases for the design-manufacture process carried out with the use of computer-aided designing/computer-aided engineering/computer-aided manufacturing systems. In the intervertebral disc implant design process, three RP technologies: FDM, 3DP and SLM were used for solving problems related to the reconstruction of geometry and functionality of the disc. Some preliminary tests such as measurement of roughness and structural analyses of material of prototypes made by different prototyping technologies were performed. Findings – This paper allowed the authors to elaborate and patent two new intervertebral disc implants. Because the implant designs are parametrical ones with relation to lumbar bone tissue properties measured on CT scans, they can be also made for individual patients. We also compared some of the properties of intervertebral implants prototypes made with the use of FDM, 3DP and SLM technologies. Originality/value – The paper presents the new intervertebral disc implants and their manufacturing by rapid prototyping. The methodology of designing intervertebral disc implant is shown. Some features of the methodology make it useful for preoperative planning of intervertebral disc surgery, as well.

In the paper finite element (FE) analysis of implanted lumbar spine segment is presented. The segment model consists of two lumbar vertebrae L4 and L5 and the prosthesis. The model of the intervertebral disc prosthesis consists of two metallic plates and a polyurethane core. Bone tissue is modelled as a linear viscoelastic material. The prosthesis core is made of a polyurethane nanocomposite. It is modelled as a non-linear viscoelastic material. The constitutive law of the core, derived in one of the previous papers, is implemented into the FE software Abaqus . It was done by means of the User-supplied procedure UMAT. The metallic plates are elastic. The most important parts of the paper include: description of the prosthesis geometrical and numerical modelling, mathematical derivation of stiffness tensor and Kirchhoff stress and implementation of the constitutive model of the polyurethane core into Abaqus software. Two load cases were considered, i.e. compression and stress relaxation under constant displacement. The goal of the paper is to numerically validate the constitutive law, which was previously formulated, and to perform advanced FE analyses of the implanted L4-L5 spine segment in which non-standard constitutive law for one of the model materials, i.e. the prosthesis core, is implemented.

Polyamide 12 (PA12) is a core material in many 3D-printing techniques, including selective laser sintering (SLS), and its mechanical characterization helps to better understand behaviors of additively manufactured parts made from this polymer. In this paper, the elastic response of SLS-produced PA12 is shown to be nonlinear. Standard test samples with different orientations with regard to the scanning direction are 3D-printed with the use of PA2200 powder, and their elastic response is investigated under uniaxial tension at different strain rates. Mooney–Rivlin hyperelastic models are proposed to address the observed nonlinear elasticity of the samples. Cyclic response of the specimens is shown to be stabilized after a few transient cycles so the material parameters are determined for trained samples after shakedown in their response. The obtained parameters are found to depend on the loading speed; thus, a rate-dependent hyperelastic constitutive model is presented for PA12 produced by selective laser sintering. This model is validated by comparing its numerical prediction with empirical responses under simple tension tests.

The present study aims to formulate a new multiscale constitutive model of human trabecular bone. The trabecular bone was modelled as a nonlinear viscoelastic material. The viscoelastic effects of single trabeculae were considered by means of a hereditary integral in which stress depends on time and strain, while the elastic response was described by the hyperelastic Mooney–Rivlin model. The cuboid bone sample was extracted from the femoral head during the hip replacement surgery. The material constants in the constitutive equation were identified based on the stress relaxation test performed on the cuboid sample and the microindentation tests performed on trabeculae using the curve-fitting procedure. The microindentation tests were performed using a spherical tip instead of Vickers or Berkovich tip to minimize plastic effects during trabecular deformation. In order to validate formulated constitutive model, results from a FE simulation of stress relaxation test and uniaxial compression test were compared to the results of the corresponding experiments conducted on a macroscopic bone sample. Good agreement was observed between numerical and experimental results. The viscoelastic behaviour predicted by the proposed constitutive equation corresponds well to the response of human trabecular bone under various types of load conditions. This demonstrates the high ability of our constitutive model to simulate the behaviour of trabecular bone on a micro- and macroscopic scale. Thus, we conclude that the model, which was formulated for a single trabecula, can be successfully applied to simulate mechanical behaviour of the tissue in a macroscale.