English abstract
Due to the distinct rise in the number of medical cases that require reconstructive surgeries
worldwide, the medical implants have increased accordingly in the past two decades.
Through it, several orthopedic diseases, defects, traumas and congenital anomalies such
as bone cancer, bone fracture, and osteoporosis can be treated or improved. Therefore, in
order to improve, substitute, repair or enhance bone health, there is a vital and essential
necessity for synthesizing biomaterials with special characterizations. However, this kind
of implants are still considered a substantial challenge and a huge burden on the quality
of healthcare. Hence, finding such safe devices, with minimum complications, made of
synthetic biomaterials can offer the bone graft field a promising alternative. Recently,
polymers are being more widely used in the medical field these days due to their
widespread availability and very simple product development and manufacturing
procedures. This is in addition to the lower cost as compared to other materials. High
density polyethylene is one of the frequently employed in medical applications due to its
mechanical strength, low cost, great biocompatibility, ease of processing, and chemical
and biological resistance. The main aim of this project is to develop the local Polyethylene
material to be used as a medical implant. This material is characterized according to its
mechanical properties such as (tensile, flexural, compression and impact properties) are
considered one of the most important properties that must be taken into consideration in
such studies. To achieve this goal, some materials must be combined with each other to
obtain a product that with properties similar to those of bone. This process is reinforcing
High-Density Polyethylene (HDPE) with a bioactive hydroxyapatite (HA) ceramic was
developed to produce bioactive composites for bone replacements. The experimental
work studied the selected mechanical properties of the locally produced High-Density
Polyethylene (HDPE) reinforced with hydroxyapatite (HA) ceramic nanoparticles (NPs)
and micro particles (MPs) with diameters of 200 nm and 200 µm respectively. HA MPs
of 1, 5, and 10 wt% and HA of 0.5, 1, and 5 wt% were blended with the HDPE using twin
screw extrusion machine. The mixing process performed at 200 rpm and 220 °C.
The result of this research indicates that, HDPE/Nano-HA composites achieved higher
property values than HDPE/Micro-HA composites for most of the mechanical tests. The
standard deviation values are reasonable, indicating that the experimental work is
repeatable. The coefficient of variation is significantly below 10, indicating that the results
are also reliable. The best value of UTS may be obtained at 1 wt% Nano-HA, where it
improves by roughly 33.8 % to neat HDPE.
