A million cycles on a hip or knee simulator is considered a million steps an average person takes per year. Most test components are simulated up to 5 million cycles or equivalent to 5 years use in the body.

Hip components when simulated typically have a ‘run-in’ phase followed by a ‘steady-state’ phase; ‘run-in’ usually occurs from 0-to-one million cycles (1Mc) at which it transitions in to ‘steady-state’ as illustrated in the wear graph.


Hip components once implanted can undergo four (4) individual or combined modes of wear; those being:



Tribology
is the science and technology of interacting surfaces in relative motion. This includes the study and application of the principles of friction, lubrication and wear.

The word tribology derives from the Greek τριβο (“tribo”) meaning ‘to rub’ and λόγος (“logos”) meaning ‘principle of logic’.

Sir Robert Charnley was a pioneer and first to introduce a commercially available hip prosthesis for total hip replacement surgery (1969). His original acetabulum liner material was made from polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE, Teflon) in 1958 which was replaced with ultra high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) in 1962 which has been marked as the gold standard of today.

Shore Western Biomedical Systems

Knee Wear Simulator
Shore Western Knee Wear Simulator was designed to simulate the complex kinematics and kinetics of the human knee in a physiological environment. With its high degree of functionality an array of knee complexities can be studied allowing researchers and designers to extensively analyze their prosthetic-knee design optimizing components and materials tribological performance. Our knee wear simulators are highly customizable and can be configured to support either ISO 14243-1 /or/ 14243-3 in orientation of three or six channels.

 

 

Hip Wear Simulator
Shore Western Hip Wear Simulator have been in use for over ten years; our design is refined to yield consistent results with a user friendly operation with regards to user interface and experiment set-up and pull down. Independent servo valves are used to control the loading on each channel to assure repeatable load profiles. The rotation is synchronized to the load to assure it is applied at the same location throughout each cycle. The rotation is generated by DC gear motor, with rotation speed set and monitored by computer which can be adjusted during operation. Our hip wear simulators can be configured to support either ISO 14242-1 /or/ 14242-3 in orientation of six or twelve channels.

 

 

Ankle-Foot Prosthesis Simulator
Shore Western Ankle-Foot Prosthesis Simulator is a new line of simulator in our biomedical systems portfolio running in accordance with ISO/DIS 22675. The simulator implements a shore western load frame (301.XX or 302.XX series) that can be fatigue rated to meet ISO specification or to your request. The simulation takes advantage of our new SC6000 servo control cards running under windows environment using an adaptive load control algorithm. This allows for a powerful displacement/load control coupling. These simulators can be configured to run in tandem using only one controller either as a bench top arrangement for small footprint requirements or as a floor standing unit.

 

 

Shore Western Spine Simulator
Contact us at biomedicalsystems@shorewestern.com for your requirements. We pride ourselves on customizing both our load frames and knee simulators to meet the need of total spine disc replacement and any medical device testing for spine application.  

 

   

Our biomedical equipment is used by some of the leading medical device companies and academic research facilities worldwide:

Biomet Inc. (USA),
Brighton Partners Inc (USA),
Depuy Inc. (USA),
Exactech Inc. (USA),
Hospital for Special Surgery (USA),
Istituti Ortopedici Rizzoli (Italy),
Kyocera Corporation (Japan),
Orthopaedic Hospital (USA),
Smith & Nephew Inc. (USA),
Southwest Research Institute (USA),
Stryker Orthopaedics (USA),
Trulife (USA),
University of Kuopio (Finland),
Wright Medical Technology Inc. (USA),
Zimmer (USA)

Shore Western proudly acknowledges Loma Linda University Medical Center (USA), as our key academic collaborator for our biomedical systems portfolio. We thank Ian Clarke PhD. and John Bowsher PhD. for their commitment to excellence in orthopaedic academic research.