Elucidation of lubrication mechanism of biphasic hydrogel and improvement of its lubricating function

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 16K18002
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Design engineering/Machine functional elements/Tribology
• Research Institution: Tokyo Metropolitan University
• Principal Investigator: Yarimitsu Seido 首都大学東京, システムデザイン研究科, 助教 (90723205)
• Project Period (FY): 2016-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: バイオトライボロジー / 人工軟骨 / ハイドロゲル / 固液二相性潤滑 / 摩擦 / 摩耗

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In this study, the influence of pre-loading on tribological behavior of PVA hydrogels and articular cartilage is discussed to elucidating the blubrication mechanism of PVA hydrogels. The increase of pre-loading time at starting frictional motion led to the increase of both friction and wear of PVA-FT gel, PVA-CD gel and articular cartilage. However, PVA-hybrid gel showed low friction with minimum wear regardless of applying pre-load. These results indicated that PVA-hybrid gel has a great potential as an artificial cartilage material.
In addition, we developed the PVA-hybrid gel with hybridization method compositing cross-linking network of PVA-FT and CD gels in single layer gel(PVA Hyb-CP gel), and PVA Hyb-CP gel showed the excellent friction and wear properties under high contact pressure condition. These results indicated that this hybridization method is effective to improve the friction and wear properties of PVA-hybrid gel for artificial cartilage.

Free Research Field

バイオトライボロジー