Case Study: Medicrea achieves more accurate spinal implant simulations with MSC Software Digimat

Designing Spinal Disc Prosthesis Implants Using Short Fiber Reinforced Composites

Medicrea, a company specializing in spinal implants, faced a challenge in designing artificial discs made from fiber-reinforced composites. The manufacturing process creates complex, varying fiber orientations within the implant, making its mechanical properties difficult to predict. Traditional simulations that assumed uniform material properties were highly inaccurate, risking implants that were too stiff, too soft, or prone to failure. MSC Software's Digimat was used to address this core challenge of predicting manufactured material performance.

The solution involved using MSC Software's Digimat to create an intelligent material model that mapped the specific fiber orientations from the molding process onto their structural analysis. This provided a vastly more accurate, location-specific prediction of the implant's behavior. The results were significant: the previous isotropic simulation had over-predicted stiffness by 170%, while the Digimat-modeled analysis matched physical test results almost perfectly. This greatly improved performance prediction and reduced costly test and analysis iterations.

Medicrea

Thomas Mosnier

R&D Manager