Title: Development of comfort fit lower limb prosthesis by reverse engineering and rapid prototyping methods and validated with gait analysis

Authors: K. Chockalingam; N. Jawahar; N. Muralidharan; K. Balachandar

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai, India ' Department of Mechatronics Engineering, Kongu Engineering College, Perundurai, 638 060, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai, India

Abstract: The development of comfort fit, custom made lower limb prosthesis using the concept of reverse engineering (RE) and rapid prototyping (RP) has been introduced in this paper. The comparison of average percentage of deviations in step lengths also made between normal people, the conventional (plaster of Paris - POP) prosthesis and reverse engineered rapid prototyping prosthesis through gait analysis. The gait analysis reveals that the average percentage of deviation in step lengths in normal person is 2.80, average percentage of deviation in step lengths in conventional (POP) prosthesis is 53.70 and reverse engineered rapid prototyping prosthesis is 7.06. The difference in average percentage of step lengths deviation between normal person and amputed person wearing reverse engineered and rapid prototyping prosthesis is very less (say 4.26) and hence provides comfort fit.

Keywords: lower limb prosthesis; prosthesis socket; reverse engineering; rapid prototyping; gait analysis.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBET.2021.114814

International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology, 2021 Vol.35 No.4, pp.362 - 381

Received: 21 Jun 2017
Accepted: 09 Mar 2018
Published online: 07 May 2021 *

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