Abstract
Designs of medical devices are tested for their mechanical behaviour, ability to transfer the load that is normally bore by the healthy tissue, and prove of the resistance to fatigue. The virtual testing in silico is widely accepted technique based on three sets of input data – geometry is normally obtained from CT or MRI scan as well as the tissue density that is translated into mechanical properties of the tissue. The virtual behaviour of the system is controlled by set of constrains accordingly while the third set of data consist of the load that system normally transfers through the load-bearing tissue. The magnitude and character of the load is highly dependent on the physical activity, external loads, physical condition of the subject and its specific factors such as gender, health condition, etc. Most of the published simulations use estimated simplified loads, which barely simulate the real behaviour of the system. The evaluation of the spinal load published some years back estimated a normal (N) and shear force (S) accompanied by the flexing moment (M). Due to lack of experimental possibility we used these data to test the biomechanical response of the lumbar segment with isotropic material models of all tissues.
Then we investigated the possibility to evaluate muscular forces and their recruitment. It is a complex task and even today it is not possible to measure directly in vivo all muscular forces contributing to the movement. The musculo-skeletal system is a statically indeterminate system. The forces can be solved by means of computational modelling based on the measured trajectories of the body motion and additional optimization functions combined with static equations. The trajectories were recorded by the fast camera system in our motion laboratory and consequently exported into an open simulation software that uses a generic skeleton with around two hundreds muscle fascicles. The skeleton was scaled to correspond to our subject's anthropometric data and further scaling to mock-up the generic vertebrae was performed to eliminate discrepancies between the generic and subject's bones. Once these adjustments were done a kinematics and inverse dynamics modules were engage with selected objective function controlling the muscular recruitment that the max. relative muscular force is as small as possible. The 84 muscular forces acting on the segment were exported to a text file in APDL language and uploaded in the Finite Element (FE) database.
The results of FE analysis were compared to the results obtained earlier using N,S,M load [1]. The comparison between the two models shows that the results of segment's total displacement was reduced by 36 percent compared to initial results. The stress and stress intensity increased six times. The identical model with orthotropic material showed reduced displacement by 80 percent and the stress and stress intensity was reduced by 60 percent compared to initial results.
