No abstract

Research significance: In the clinical practice, surgeons sometimes must deal with extended bone defects. Among others, bone grafts are used for filling the large absence. After implantation, the structure of the graft can change, and the graft's load-bearing effect can be significant. This leads to the idea, that during the design of an implant this effect should be taken into account in the finite element simulations. In this paper, the authors show the implementation of the bone graft adaptation. Methodology: This programming task was done by using Python, Tcl and the HyperMesh interface. The bone remodeling algorithm and the related parameters were from the literature research. The results are shown with a finite element model prepared for the Optistruct solver, where the geometry models were based on a patient's CT data. Results: Viewing the bone graft's elemental apparent density, the most loaded areas could be detected. Conclusion: The model can predict qualitatively the bone graft's change, which can provide additional information for the implant design. Further analyses are required to investigate the sensitivity of the results.