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Center for Teaching Excellence

Making Biomaterial Development Real to Students—Elizabeth Friis


Graduate student in biomaterials lab
Graduate student in biomaterials lab

Project Notes

Stress and strain assignment #4 (PDF) (HTML)

Implants and more assignment #5 (PDF) (HTML)

Exam revisited assignment #6 (PDF) (HTML)

Medical device evaluation project (PDF) (HTML)

Reverse engineering guidelines (PDF) (HTML)

Project proposal guidelines (PDF) (HTML)

Update: Rubrics and assignments for Fall 2005 class

Rubric for Fall 2005 class (PDF) (HTML)

Background | Implementation | Student Performance | Reflections | Comments

Implementation - Exam revisited assignment #6

Biomaterials ME 765
Fall 2003

Homework #6 – due 11/20/03 (please note extended deadline)
(10 points total)

1. First Exam, revisited – (2 points)
You are a biomaterials engineer in a large company named Implants R Us. You are the person responsible for assessing new technology that is presented to the company for possible acquisition and future development. A small company (Biomat2B) presents a proposal to you to buy the license for a new composite material they have developed. Their new composite material is an UHMWPE with 30 v/o carbon nanotubules (really small fibers). In their proposal to you, Biomat2B shows data proving that their new composite material has a tensile strength that is 4 times and fracture toughness that is 2 times that of conventional UHMWPE. Biomat2B proposes that this material would be ideal for use in the bearing surface total hip and total knee replacement implants.
Would you:

  • License the rights to this technology from Biomat2B immediately?
  • Require more research results from them (and therefore pay for that research) before buying the rights to the technology? If so, for what research would you pay?
or
  • Thank Biomat2B for their efforts but decline further interest in their technology.

Justify your answer.

2. You are a design engineer in the spine division for a large orthopaedic implant corporation. Your team has been assigned the task of developing a superior total disc arthroplasty system for the lumbar spine.

  • Outline the steps you would take in approaching this problem.
  • List and briefly justify the multiple considerations that must be made in your development plan.

3. Design (brief) testing protocols for determining:

  • the fatigue strength of PMMA bone cement
  • the rigidity of an external fixation device placed on a fractured ulna
  • testing of a bone plate for fracture fixation

4. Define what the term tissue engineering means. Give five examples of where developments in tissue engineering would benefit humans.

5. Some piezoelectric ceramics have been considered as substitutes for hard tissues (i.e., bone). It has been shown that these tissues are themselves piezoelectric and that healing can be enhanced by electric potential.

  • What design considerations are there for a piezoelectric implant to be used for a bone gap spacer?
  • What type of fixation method can be used?
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