ANALYZING THE PRESSURE AND SHEAR STRESS OFCONTACT INTERFACE INSIDE THE TRANS-FEMORAL SOCKET DURING WALKING

Abstract

The lower extremity amputation affected seriously to the quality of daily life activities of the amputee. The lower limb prosthesis designing technique currently has been developed to solve many hard problems such as the contact interface between the skin and the socket surface. Understanding the pressure and shear stress of the contact interface between the skin and socket surface during walking is important for socket designing. In this study, the measurement system during subject walking with seven points on the socket which contacted the human skin was proposed. The experiment results showed that the subject would feel much pain during the first peak of the stance phase at medial proximal and anterior distal regions since the total stresses are very high. At anterior proximal region, the pain at first peak mostly is due to the pressure, however, at the second peak stance phase, the pain is more increment due to the shear in the vertical direction.