Investigation on the influence of soft tissues in knee joint on load transfer mechanism during the gait cycle.

Soft tissues keep the human knee joint stable and serve an essential function in limiting motion during daily activities. The goal of this work is to investigate the influence of knee components during a person subjected to walking. A 3D finite element model of a knee joint used for the analysis. The knee kinetics (forces and rotation) during the stance phase of a gait in all degrees of freedom are incorporated into the model. The contact pressure, effective Lagrange strain, maximum shear stress, effective stress and total displacement generated on all the soft tissues are compared. The meniscus shows a more excellent value in all areas concerning other tissues, and for stress values, it is 4 to 5 times greater. The result also indicates that the contact pressure of the tibial cartilage is higher than the femur cartilage throughout the cycle. However, the effective Lagrange strain of femur cartilage is higher than tibial cartilage during the initial phase of the cycle and later declined. These values might help develop comprehensive computational tools to help us better understand the knee injury and disease causes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]