A development of the finite element analysis for studying the osteoarthritis of the knee joint

Abstract

The osteoarthritis means a knee joint disease which occurs frequently in aged woman especially the overweight person. More making physical activity is a cause that is able to activate the degeneration. The structure of deteriorated articular cartilage and meniscus will gradually changing until the knee joint that is not able to support the body weight. The mostly researches have investigated the stress on the different components of the knee joint. However, the study effect of the body weight on the knee joint degeneration with changing the posture has not been found. This study proposes the development of the finite element method in order to evaluate the stress on the meniscus of the knee joint with the varied flexion angles during changing the posture from sitting to standing. The osteoarthritis can be predicted by consideration of the determined transfer function. The simulation results found that the stress on the meniscus was increased with increasing external load. The maximum stress appeared on the medial meniscus and was significantly increased with the raising in the flexion angle.