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Full-Text Articles in Mechanical Engineering
Design, Development And Testing Of A Balance Board With Variable Torsional Stiffness And Time Delay, Denise Renee Cruise
Design, Development And Testing Of A Balance Board With Variable Torsional Stiffness And Time Delay, Denise Renee Cruise
Open Access Theses
The ability to balance and maintain upright posture can decline for a variety of reasons, such as aging and neuromuscular impairment. As the ability to balance declines, the risk of falling increases. Falls are a major cause of injury, and often lead to a dramatic decline in quality of life. Currently, to alleviate balance deficiencies, people participate in balance training, which most commonly refers to standing on an unstable balance board; the most common boards used are either passive wobble boards, or more advanced commercial systems such as the Biodex System SD ® or the Neurocom SMART Balance Master® . …
Modeling Tools For Conformal Orthotic Devices, Steven David Riddle
Modeling Tools For Conformal Orthotic Devices, Steven David Riddle
Open Access Theses
The purpose of this thesis is to advance the design of conformal orthotic devices through the development of two modeling tools to address knowledge gaps in the field.
The field of human orthotics has been continually troubled by identifying successful methods of harnessing devices to the body. Past orthotics have utilized a rigid framework with minimal degrees of freedom (DOFs) driven by hard actuators attached to the body at select anchor points. Many devices design the structure and anchor points such that they reduce the degrees of freedom of a targeted joint, limiting the user's mobility and often causing the …
Modeling Of Legged Locomotion With A Suspended Load In The Sagittal Plane, Karna P. Potwar
Modeling Of Legged Locomotion With A Suspended Load In The Sagittal Plane, Karna P. Potwar
Open Access Theses
Walking or running while carrying loads has always been a tedious task, more so when the loads are heavy. Such a task of carrying loads not only requires extra effort but also leads to physical pain and in some cases injury. Prior studies on human locomotion with a suspended load have used models that are restricted in their DOFs and so are not able to take into account the fore aft movement in human beings. The objective of this thesis is to model the dynamics of sagittal plane center-of-mass locomotion with a suspended load and apply findings to carrying loads …