TJ866 : Knee Brace Design baxsed on the Novel Knee Model and Dynamic Stability during Human Walking
Thesis > Central Library of Shahrood University > Mechanical Engineering > PhD > 2022
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Abstract
Medial unloader braces are often developed to achieve pain elimination of the knee medial compartment. However, traditional braces cause medial unloading along with lateral overloading. Neglecting this phenomenon, unwarranted rotation from adduction to abduction oblige the knee to confront the overloading of the lateral compartment. Subsequently, the risk of damage is dictated to the lateral compartment exceedingly In order to prevent the overloading of the lateral compartment, the new embedded mechanism is designed and controlled for unloader braces baxsed on a novel computational procedure for the first time.
Particularly for knee osteoarthritis (KOA) patients, this study investigates the relevance of the knee model after identifying the most influential parameter. Since KOA causes the cartilage in a joint to lose its elasticity and thickness, the lack of normal bone-to-bone separation can be painful. We believe that cartilage penetration depth control is an impactful strategy in this research. Moreover, the knee contact force in KOA is fewer than in healthy knees, confirming that the contact force control cannot be a straight factor. Therefore, a biomechanical human knee model is developed, and a generic procedure for dynamic analysis of contact problems in combination with the musculoskeletal model is introduced. The developed model includes the geometric exxpression of collision curves and an algorithm for determining collision points. This presentation addresses cartilage penetration depth and contact force calculation through nonlinear discontinuous contact law. In view of this, femur and tibia’s relative motion is analyzed through the combined collision reactions of cartilage and bone in the knee. We use the proposed procedure on a previous realistic model that calculates the cartilage penetration depth and knee abduction-adduction angle simultaneously, which are the surrogate parameter for determining pain in knee osteoarthritis. Therefore, the new unloader brace corrects the abduction angle via the embedded mechanism. It applies unloader force along with the contact point and cartilage penetration depth consideration. The proposed flowchart is presented and tested on simulated reference data. We calculate the maximum required torque in the abduction direction for tracking desired abduction-adduction angle. Then, the saturated torque through the robust control method is applied in the presence of interaction force uncertainty between the orthosis and the user. In the simulation, maximum penetration depth in a healthy knee is reported to be 0.705 mm, while in a 75% KOA is 0.521 mm, including 0.5mm cartilage-cartilage contact and 0.021mm bone-bone contact. The top unloading 852N (1.14 BW) is achieved, reducing penetration depth to 0.45 mm, avoiding bone-bone contact. Moreover, the novel procedure leads to 852 N lateral compartment overloading. A very small femur rotation change (1.7°) from adduction to abduction in the frontal plane is adequate to significantly reduce the medial contact force (around 751 N). Moreover, the required torque in the presence of interaction force is calculated. The maximum amount of interaction force torque for position control is 27.6 Nm. This proposed procedure with low computation gives us a suitable analysis method for designing knee assistive devices. The result shows that our design for solving the dynamic equation and robust control method is requisite for reliable unloading. Remarkably, the novel procedure and brace prevent excessive overloading of the lateral compartment while it unloads the medial compartment sufficiently.
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#Keywords: Knee dynamics; Musculoskeletal modeling; Contact model; Cartilage penetration depth; unloader brace Keeping place: Central Library of Shahrood University
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