Numerical Measurement of a Virtual Model for the Knee Prosthesis Geometry

Abstract

The human knee joint usually suffers progressive deterioration with time. The conventional cure of this issue is to replace it with an alternate knee by applying the prosthesis implant. The reason is that the process causes the abrasion of the different materials rather than just sliding or rolling. This study aims to develop the numerical measurement of the knee prosthesis’s geometry, which fulfils the mechanical requirements of the human knee. The MSC.ADAMS programme was applied to demonstrate the movement of the human knee joint in terms of rotation and flexion. The changes between the condyles of the developed multibody of the prosthesis related to the flexion angle ranging from 20–120° were investigated and presented. The boundary conditions were determined, and simulations performed using the ADAM’s programme. An average value of 0.7 was reached for the slip ration, with the maximum getting up to 0.79. An angle between 110–120° for the flexion angle was obtained. It can be said that the application of the multibody model saves time as there is no involvement of the tibia and the femur as required for the knee prosthesis. More importantly, as the application of the test machine is omitted in our process, our model’s approximations to a human knee are carried out directly. Without cost, several measurements for the knee prosthesis could be made and repaired. The study results provide the necessary insight for future tests regarding the movement of the knee joint.

Keywords

• modelling
• knee joint
• rotation
• flexion
• kinematics
• MSC ADAMS