Energy minimizing solutions to problems of design in mechanics

There is growing interest in affixing a hip prosthesis within the femoral canal without the use of bonding cements. The alternative to cement is to allow bone to grow into the prosthesis which secures the implant in plan'. ( 'urrently, a cementkss prosthesis is designed to maximize the contact l>f'tween the implant and femoral canal. :\n alternative design which minimizes the strain energy within the bone and implant is considered. The bone and prosthesis are modeled by various configurations of one-dimensional rods and two-dimensional bodies. Exact solutions for one dimensional problems and numerical results for the two-dimensional problem are obtained by solving relevant boundary value problems. Numerical results are achieved by implementing the finite element method.