This project deals with development of a workflow
for wear and functional simulation of total
knee replacement (TKR). All loads and driven
motion of the knee joint are computed in the
muscoloskeletal modelling program AnyBodyTM
during a gait cycle, and through MATLAB applied
to an FE model solved in FEBio. This
model, containing tibial implant, femoral implant
and the major surrounding ligaments, is solved
with boundary conditions in all six degrees of
freedom.
The FE analysis predicts the kinematics and internal
contact of the joint, of which the former is
compared to fluoroscopic data and the AnyBody
model. This showed good agreement in the translation
directions, but the agreement of the rotations
varied.
The linear wear is estimated from the computed
contact pressure with a developed algorithm written
in MATLAB, which is verified with experimental
results reported in the literature. The
algorithm predicted a very low maximum wear
depth (76.3 % deviation), compared to the literature,
but the wear contour was in good agreement.
The MS model can solve both an idealised hinge
constrained model and a contact-based knee joint
model, and in this project the wear during a gait
cycle is investigated for both methods to investigate
the difference in wear depth. The latter
method uses the force-dependent kinematic
solver, and this method turned out to predict the
highest wear depth of the two methods.