Iranian Journal of Mechanical Engineering Transactions of ISME

Iranian Journal of Mechanical Engineering Transactions of ISME

Design and Simulation of a patient-specific ankle orthosis using torsional spring

Authors
School of Mechanical Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
People suffering from neuromuscular diseases, may also face certain abnormalities in their
walking pattern. Drop foot patients suffer from some restrictions in dorsiflexion as well as in
controlling their plantarflexion during the gait cycle because of abnormal stiffness pattern of
the ankle joint. The two major complications of drop foot are slapping of the foot after heel
strike (foot slap) and dragging of the toe during swing (toe drag). The current treatment options
like Ankle Foot Orthosis (AFO) while offering some biomechanical benefits, do not adapt to
different walking conditions and fail to eliminate significant gait complications.
This study proposes a passive Ankle Foot Orthosis design which combines an AFO and
torsional spring. The required moment to reproduce the stiffness of a normal ankle joint is
calculated using the OpenSim software package in conjunction with the data collected from the
motion analysis of each patient. Torsional spring was then used to reproduce the calculated
moment for different levels of muscles weakness. It is shown that by designing patient-specific
orthosis, the stiffness profile of normal joint for each patient with distinct level of muscles
weakness can be reproduced.
Keywords

Subjects


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  • Receive Date 07 March 2019
  • Revise Date 14 May 2020
  • Accept Date 04 April 2021