Track: Healthcare Systems

Abstract

In a lubricated system, wear particle analysis is considered a vital condition monitoring technique used to monitor the contact condition of two surfaces that are in relative motion. Wear particles are resulting from the generated friction between the two mating surfaces. Wear and friction are two main disciplines of Tribology, the science deal-ing with interacting surfaces including wear, friction and lubrication. Qualitative, quantitative, and morphological data could be obtained from the wear particle analysis through the periodically taken samples of the lubricant. This is implemented through different techniques to show the wear mode and severity level. The same phenomena would be found in human joints, as in hips, knees, ankles, shoulders, elbows and finger joints. Wear particles are generated from cartilages and bones and released into the synovial fluid. The generated wear particles could be used for mon-itoring the joints condition. This is applied for natural and artificial joints as well. Debris materials could be metals, polymers, ceramics, cements as well as cartilage and bone materials. Analysis of these particles could be an effective tool for disease diagnosis especially in the early stages. In this study, a survey of the applications of the wear particle analysis in human joints is presented, the similarity of the Tribological aspects between the lubricated machines and human joints is introduced and the different techniques used in this analysis are showed. Recommendations for future works are offered based on the literature review.