Martulli Luca Michele, Sala Riccardo, Rollo Gennaro, Kostovic Milutin, Lavorgna Marino, Sorrentino Andrea, Gruppioni Emanuele, Bernasconi Andrea
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Via La Masa 1, 20156 Milano, Italy.
National Research Council (CNR), Polymer, Composites and Biomaterials Institute, Via Previati 1/E, 23900 Lecco, LC, Italy.
Polymers (Basel). 2023 Jan 9;15(2):346. doi: 10.3390/polym15020346.
Three-dimensional printed polymers offer unprecedented advantages for prosthetic applications, namely in terms of affordability and customisation. This work thus investigates the possibility of designing an additively manufactured prosthetic foot using continuous fibre-reinforced polymers as an alternative to composite laminate ones. A numerical approach was thus proposed and validated as a possible design tool for additively manufactured composite feet. This approach was based on explicit separate simulations of the infill, aiming to capture its homogenised engineering constants. The approach was validated on simple sandwich specimens with a different infill geometry: stiffness predictions were within the experimental standard deviation for 3D simulations. Such an approach was thus applied to redesign a laminated component of a foot prosthesis inspired by a commercial one with new additive technology. The new component was about 83% thicker than the reference one, with 1.6 mm of glass fibre skins out of about 22 mm of the total thickness. Its stiffness was within 5% of the reference laminated one. Overall, this work showed how additive manufacturing could be used as a low-cost alternative to manufacturing affordable prosthetic feet.
三维打印聚合物在假肢应用方面具有前所未有的优势，即在可承受性和定制性方面。因此，这项工作研究了使用连续纤维增强聚合物设计增材制造假脚的可能性，以替代复合层压板假脚。因此，提出并验证了一种数值方法，作为增材制造复合脚的一种可能的设计工具。该方法基于对填充部分的显式单独模拟，旨在获取其均匀化的工程常数。该方法在具有不同填充几何形状的简单三明治试样上得到了验证：3D模拟的刚度预测在实验标准偏差范围内。因此，这种方法被应用于重新设计一种受商业假脚启发的假肢层压部件，并采用新的增材制造技术。新部件比参考部件厚约83%，在总厚度约22毫米中，玻璃纤维外皮为1.6毫米。其刚度在参考层压部件的5%以内。总体而言，这项工作展示了增材制造如何作为制造经济实惠的假脚的低成本替代方案。
