Total Knee Arthroplasty (TKA) continues to be a common and important orthopedic procedure for many in the UnitedStates. Despite recent medical advancements and increasing knowledge in the orthopedic community, it has beendetermined that 20% of TKA patients are still dissatisfied with their knee replacements. Causes of this failure includeseptic loosening and wear on the bearing component of the implant. Another cause of failure that has received specificattention from the mechanical community is aseptic loosening, which has been attributed to unbalanced ligaments ormisalignment of the implant components. Previous efforts have been made to detect loosening by using passive forcesensors such as piezoelectric transducers or strain gauges to detect misalignment. An alternative to this is to perform activesensing or structural health monitoring to evaluate possible loosening before it becomes a critical concern to the patient.One method of structural health monitoring, called the electromechanical impedance (EMI) method, is particularlyattractive as it can use a single, compact piezoelectric transducer to determine the state of the host structure. This work isintended to evaluate the ability of the EMI method in sensing loosening between the cement and bone of a TKA tibial tray.This work will utilize real tibial trays implanted into synthetic bone (Sawbone) to evaluate the feasibility of detectingloosening using the EMI method. The intention of this work is to serve as a foundation for further in-vivo and intraoperativestudies.
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