Evaluation of temperature distribution for bone drilling considering aging factor

Bone drilling is a routine operation in surgeries, such as neurosurgery and orthopedics. However, the excessive drilling temperature may cause severe thermal damage to the bone tissue. Therefore, the drilling temperature determination of bone tissue can reduce the harm caused by thermal damage. A time-varying temperature field simulation model of bone drilling was set up by ABAQUS software in this paper, based on the Johnson-Cook model. Then it was validated with experiments by drilling cortical bone of fresh bovine shaft of the femur. The relative error between the experimental values and the theoretical values within 7.67% showed a good consistency. Furthermore, the aging factor is also considered to evaluate the temperature field of bone drilling. The results showed that the drilling temperature near the bone-drill area increased significantly. The drilling temperature of cortical bone decreases sharply with the radial distance and exhibits a hysteresis lag in the axial distribution. The aging factor mainly affects the peak of drilling temperature. The peak of drilling temperature tends to increase with age. The peak drilling temperature in the elderly (70y) was up to 6.8% higher than that in the young (20y), indicating that the elderly is more prone to excessive drilling temperature. Therefore, special attention should be paid to the temperature control of elderly bone tissue.