Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering Commons^™

Intergranular Corrosion-Fatigue Failure Of Cobalt-Alloy Femoral Stems. A Failure Analysis Of Two Implants, Jeremy L. Gilbert, Christine A. Buckley, Joshua J. Jacobs, Kim C. Bertin, Michael R. Zernich

Biomedical and Chemical Engineering - All Scholarship

Two modular hip implants with a cobalt-alloy head and a cobalt-alloy stem were retrieved after a fracture had occurred in the neck region of the femoral component, eighty-five and seventy months after implantation. Both implants failed less than one millimeter distal to the taper junction between the head and the stem (outside of the taper). The fracture surfaces of the implant were investigated with the use of scanning electron microscopy, to determine the nature of the failure process. The fractures occurred at the grain boundaries of the microstructure and appeared to be the result of three factors: porosity at the …