Characterization & prediction of mechanical behavior of bio-composites

The present work reports the synthesis, fabrication and characterization of hydroxyapatite (HAp) based polyethylene bio-composites as an artificial bone implant material. The main problem with the metallic bone implants is the stress shielding and bone regeneration, which may be overcome by introducing polymer based light weight bone implants. HAp was synthesized by wet chemical precipitation technique and mixed with high density polyethylene (HDPE) and high molecular high density polyethylene (HMHDPE) using micro-compounder and twin screw extruder. Mocro-injection molding and compression molding processes were used to prepare the samples. Testing of different mechanical properties like tensile, compressive, flexural, impact and two body abrasion wear has been carried out. The experimental results showed a sustainable mechanical behavior. An artificial neural network (ANN) and a fuzzy logic (FL) model have been presented, for the prediction of two-body abrasion wear amount of the fabricated bio-composites. It was found that both the fuzzy and ANN model are able to predict the abrasion wear rate with a very high degree of accuracy.