This study is a contribution to the growing body of work on the influence of changes in the composition of an acrylic bone cement on various properties of the curing and cured material. The focus is on one commercially-available acrylic bone cement brand, Surgical Simplex®P, and three variants of it and a series of properties, namely, setting time, maximum exotherm temperature, activation energy and frequency factor for the polymerization reaction, diffusion coefficient for the uptake of phosphate buffered saline, at 37 °C, ultimate compressive strength (UCS), plane-strain fracture toughness, fatigue life (under fully-reversed tension-compression stress), hardness (H) and elastic modulus (both determined using quasi-static nanoindentation), and the variation of the storage and loss moduli with frequency of the applied force in a dynamic nanoindentation test. It was found that (a) a 68% reduction in the volume of the activator, N,N dimethyl-4-toluidine, relative to the total volume of the liquid monomer (the amounts of all the constituents in the powder and of the hydroquinone in the liquid monomer remaining unchanged) led to, for example, a significant decrease in the rate of the polymerization reaction, at 37 °C (c′) and a significant increase in H; and (b) the elimination of the pre-polymerized poly (methyl methacrylate) beads in the powder (the amounts of all the other powder constituents and those of the liquid monomer remaining unchanged) led to, for example, a significant drop in c′ and a significant increase in UCS. Thus, these findings suggest a strategy for optimizing the composition of an acrylic bone cement.
