Numerical measurement of contact pressure in the tibiofemoral joint during gait

Abstract

In this study, the mechanical responses for the knee joint model in various degrees of flexion and loadings during gait are investigated. Three gait phases consisting of heel strike (HS) (5.5°), single limb stance (SLS) (15.5°), and toe-off (TO) (4.5°) are considered to represent the gait cycle while simulated loading conditions applied for each phase are 2.25 times body weight (BW), 1.85 times BW, and 3.5 times BW, respectively, where the BW is 495 N. The knee images are imported from a computerized tomography (CT) scan to Mimics version 13.1 software for smoothing and constructing to the three-dimensional (3D) model of the tibio-femoral (TF) joint. Finite element analysis (FEA) using the ABAQUS v.6.7 software was performed to simulate the biomechanical patterns of the tibiofemoral (TF) joint. The knee joint is modeled with femur condyles, tibia plateau, and menisci attachment. The contact pressure toward these 3 components is investigated at each medial and lateral compartment of the joint parts. The simulating results are verified and compared with well-known results in the literatures, which showed that contact pressure behaved much greater on the medial compartments than on the lateral compartments throughout the phases. Meanwhile, it was found that the peak contact pressure occurred during TO.