Abstract
Prosthetic patients, most of them are elderly, demonstrate diverse walking patterns rather than normal walking and they perform various kinds of lower limb activities besides level walking during daily life. It is known any prostheses do not guarantee the endurance as expected, because they had been designed so as to duplicate knee motions during normal level walking. Either in-vitro or in-vivo experiments are not easy to assess the performance and endurance of the knee prostheses under the conditions representing the various kind of knee motions. Mathematical model analyses could be alternative to the experiments. In this study, we developed a meticulous knee joint model, in which both the tibio-femoral and patello-femoral compartments have been incorporated and such a phenomenon has been taken into account as the tendon turns around the femoral surface at deep knee flexion.
