Computational analysis of prosthesis production via topology optimization

Abstract

This work investigates the use of Topology Optimization (TO) to support the design of femur prosthesis to obtain more efficient solutions from the point of view of material distribution and internal forces. Computational tests were performed by the Interior-Point OPTimizer (IPOPT) method, seeking to explore the elastic mechanical characteristics of three real scenarios of daily loads on the femur. Numerical examples are presented to verify the novelty of the proposed method. The results obtained indicate that it is possible to reduce the volume of material up to 30% of the customize human femoral prosthesis, respecting all the boundary conditions.

Keywords:

• Prosthesis
• topology optimization
• computational analysis

Acknowledgements

We leave a special thanks to two researchers: Andre Luis Ferreira da Silva - https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2130-309X and Diego Hayashi Alonso - https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6032-9989 of the Multiphysics Systems Optimization Laboratory (MSOL) team at the Polytechnic of the University of São Paulo for all their collaboration in implementing the FEniCS package.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior.