Total hip replacement is a representative treatment for avascular necrosis of the femoral head. However, the stress shielding caused by the replacement induces dissociation of the artificial hip joint and various complications. Many studies have tried to explore the stress shielding but, most studies have been conducted at macro level and not at micro level. Thus, this study aimed to quantitatively analyze the structural behavior of the proximal femur according to total hip replacement at the micro level to explore the stress shielding. For this purpose, this study selected the artificial hip joint of the single wedge type and implanted the joint into a proximal femur that has a high resolution of 50 μm. Then the structural behavior of the implanted femur was analyzed by comparing that of the intact femur under three daily activity loads. As a result, the high possibility was confirmed that the stress shielding will occur in both cortical and cancellous bones under the one-legged stance movements. Additionally, it was discovered that the cancellous bone had a considerably lesser chance of adducting at an angle similar to the neck shaft angle of an artificial hip joint.

The bone scaffold is artificial mechanical support, that is implanted on collapsed bone microstructure. The clinical field has become interested in that, because it is free of immunological rejection. However, few studies have analyzed quantitively the mechanical interaction with the surrounding bone tissue, when the bone scaffold is implanted. Thus, the purpose of this study was to analyze structural behavior variance, according to porous structures of the bone scaffold. This study set the proximal femoral head as the implantation skeletal system, and defined bone scaffolds (i.e. triangular, rectangle, circular, honeycomb) with four porous structures. Then, structural behavior variance was analyzed, caused by the implantation of bone scaffolds. As a result, it was quantitatively confirmed that a porous structure such as a normal bone that can transmit and support an external load is important.