Modeling and Simulation of Mechanical Behavior in Knee Joint under Gait

Mechanical behavior of articular cartilage is affected by many factors. Inhomogeneous distribution of proteoglycans and collagen fibers through the thickness causes some depth-wise behavior. Mechanical properties directly affect stress and deformation of the tissue. In previous studies complexities and variation in mechanical properties were ignored. The aim of the present study is to create a model close to real anatomy of articular cartilage in knee joint and to simulate its behavior under dynamic gate in the stance phase. A 3D finite element (FE) model was created. It was constructed considering femur and tibial cartilages as well as medial and lateral meniscus. In the FE model, a nonlinear isotropic viscoelastic material model used for cartilages and a linear anisotropic elastic one was chosen for meniscuses. As well, cartilages assumed saturated . Numerical simulations on the model showed that peak of maximum principal stress occurred in superficial layer. It was decreased through thickness. These expressed why osteoarthritis fall out in the exterior layers such superficial . The present study showed that hydraulic permeability variation in cartilage as a strain-dependent variable was negligible in dynamic loading. Also, results had a good agreement with experimental ones