大腿義足装着者の歩容安定化に向けた固定/伸展膝継手の膝関節ブレーキ系の性能評価

抄録

In general, above knee prosthesis cannot generate extension torque at knee joint. It is difficult for wearer of above knee prosthesis to walk upstairs, in addition the burden on the other leg and waist is increased. On the other hand, above knee prosthesis that able to extend knee joint is expensive and heavy and need battery charge. We developed an inexpensive above knee prosthesis, which can prevent knee buckling during the stance phase and assist stairs climbing. It is named above knee prosthesis with a fix/extension mechanism. This study evaluates braking force for several small-scale brake, including disc-brake, band-brake and dram-brake, which is necessary to prevent buckling. This experiment show that dram-brake can generate larger braking force and is more suitable for knee joint brake than disc-brake because of self-servo effect of the structure of the dram-brake. Therefore, our current above knee prosthesis with a fix/extension mechanism is improved by using dram-brake. The current above knee prosthesis and the previous version are examined experimentally. The fixing motion of the previous knee joint brake needs larger ground reaction force, which delay the timing of knee joint fixing and cause unstable gaits. The current knee joint brake can work quickly, which can improve gait stabilization.