Measurements of Surface Roughness in Conventional and Ultrasonically Assisted Bone Drilling

Bone fracture due to an accident, aging or diseases is a feature of everyday life. One of the principal methods of repair and reconstruction of such a fracture is based on drilling the bone and fixing its separate parts together using screws, wires and plates. Morphology of the drilled hole surface and fixative components such as screws, pins and hooks influences strength of the bonds between them. Modern measurement methods provide researchers with a high-precision data on the main parameters of surface roughness. This study is concerned with measurements of surface roughness of holes drilled in a cortical bone using two drilling techniques. Hole’s surface roughness produced with conventional drilling (CD) and ultrasonically assisted drilling (UAD) was measured with, and compared for, various contact and non-contact methods. The difference in surface roughness for both drilling techniques was explained based on high-speed filming of the bone drilling processes.