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Modeling of Walking in a Gait Trainer, to Modify and Optimize Its Mechanism

Salehy Aminy, Mohammad | 2009

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  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 39301 (08)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Mechanical Engineering
  6. Advisor(s): Farahmand, Farzam; Narimani, Roya
  7. Abstract:
  8. Several diseases and injuries may cause disability in locomotion (especially walking). Spinal cord injuries, brain stroke and disease like Parkinson are the most major causes. In the past, some efforts has been made to reduce the effect of organ’s disabilities, but today, there is the chance of healing the spinal cord injury By using new (Schwann Cell) method. Due to long time stillness and severe muscles weakness; condensed physiotherapy exercise is essential to recover locomotion abilities, particularly in walking. In this way, if the practices matches with the normal walking (especially weight bearing); it has more physiological and psychological effect. In order to achieve this goal, a gait trainer has been designed and built. This device can fortify patient’s muscles and teaches walking to him simultaneously. In primary tests of the gait trainer, it revealed that the joints angle pattern is different from natural one and the main part of walking cycle (Stance Phase) was performed incompletely. After consideration, we found that the cause of these deviations is the faults in the basic path which has been used for design of the mechanism. In this way, after path modification, we designed a mechanism to simulate gait practice correctly. After a review on literature of knee and lower limb, we develop a model to simulate walking with gait trainer to be sure about true functionality of it. This model can predict Knee Flexion Angle, Ground Reaction Forces, Contact Force in Articular Surface and Ligamentous Force. We verified our model by simulation normal walking and compared the results with treadmill walking. After verification, we proved that if the patient position be in a proper situation, the knee flexion angle pattern and ground reaction force are in a manner that they can help to rehabilitate the patient using simulated walking in gait trainer
  9. Keywords:
  10. Gait Trainer Device ; Optimal Design ; Two Dimensional Model ; Feet ; Simulation ; Locomotion

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