Abstract
In the designing process of footwear, it is important to consider requirement properties and establish the quantitative evaluation technique. Generally footwear stability which controls the excessive pronation has been quantitatively evaluated by foot joint angles, calcaneus eversion and tibial internal rotation. On the other hand, upper portion must be deleted to attach the reflective markers on the ankle in the current evaluation method. The purpose of this study is to develop the new footwear stability evaluation method without upper deletion. The new method focuses on the difference of medial and lateral midsole compressive deformations at the vicinity of MP joint. In order to check the validity of the proposed method, four runners with different contact patterns are used and motion analyses are performed. Therefore it is confirmed that the above difference can be an index to tibial internal rotation. Furthermore the application examples of the method to the practical footwear designing are described.
