Engineering Commons^™

Development And Validation Of A Human Knee Joint Finite Element Model For Tissue Stress And Strain Predictions During Exercise, Spencer D. Wangerin

Master's Theses

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a degenerative condition of cartilage and is the leading cost of disability in the United States. Motion analysis experiments in combination with knee-joint finite element (FE) analysis may be used to identify exercises that maintain knee-joint osteochondral (OC) loading at safe levels for patients at high-risk for knee OA, individuals with modest OC defects, or patients rehabilitating after surgical interventions. Therefore, a detailed total knee-joint FE model was developed by modifying open-source knee-joint geometries in order to predict OC tissue stress and strain during the stance phase of gait. The model was partially validated for predicting the …

An Investigation Of Subaxial Cervical Spine Trauma And Surgical Treatment Through Biomechanical Simulation And Kinematic Analysis, Stewart D. Mclachlin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In vitro biomechanical investigations can help to identify changes in subaxial cervical spine (C3-C7) stability following injury, and determine the efficacy of surgical treatments through controlled joint simulation experiments and kinematic analyses. However, with the large spectrum of cervical spine trauma, a large fraction of the potential injuries have not been examined biomechanically. This includes a lack of studies investigating prevalent flexion-distraction injuries. Therefore, the overall objective of this thesis was to investigate the changes in subaxial cervical spine kinematic stability with simulated flexion-distraction injuries and current surgical instrumentation approaches using both established and novel biomechanical techniques.

Three in vitro …