MODELING AND ANALYSIS OF FEMUR COMPONENT OF A PROSTHETIC KNEE JOINT

Degenerative arthritis is a disease that affects the line cartilage of the knee joint. It causes severe pain in the joint and may require a replacement surgery of the affected knee with artificial components. Geometric complexity and non linearity of the materials of the knee make the analytical solutions of the mechanical behavior of the knee joint difficult. The knee is the most complex joint within the human body. Computational modeling of the knee provides a way for better understanding the interplay between the hard and soft tissue constituents of the knee during normal and pathologic function. Additionally, properly validated models can be used in the design of knee implant systems by understanding the mechanics of the restored knee in order to more closely replicate the healthy knee.The objective of this dissertation was to model a femur part of prosthetic knee joint from the available literature and study the distribution of stresses in the same by assigning it the desired material properties.Commercially available software (ANSYS 11.0) was used for numerical estimation of static stress. The effects of the different materials and flexion angles on stresses in the femur component were investigated.