Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Design And Analysis Of A Compliant Mechanism Spinal Implant, Eric M. Stratton

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis introduces and presents the modeling of a novel compliant spinal implant designed to reduce back pain and restore function to degenerate spinal disc tissues as well as provide a mechanical environment conducive to healing the tissues. The initial objectives for this device development and the focus of this work are modeling and validation of the force-deflection relationships and stress analysis. Modeling was done using the pseudo-rigid-body model to create a 3 degree of freedom mechanism for flexion-extension (forward-backward bending) and a 5 degree of freedom mechanism for lateral bending (side-to-side). These models were analyzed using the principle of …