Biomechanics of the knee joint

number: 
1482
English
Degree: 
Author: 
Samar Riyadh Al-Ruznamachi
Supervisor: 
Dr. Albert E. Yousif
year: 
2006
Abstract:

The knee joint is the largest unprotected synovial joint in the human body, and is called a hinge joint, but actually it is more complicated than that.The knee joins the patella, the distal femoral condyles, and the proximal tibial plateaus. It has two degrees of freedom: The first degree, involves flexion-extension movement of a 'true hinge joint'.The second degree, involves rotary movement and is only possible in flexion.The work reported in this thesis is an attempt to apply a statical model for the knee joint to analyse the forces during flexed-knee stance with the aid ofcomputed tomography (CT) technique, in order to measure the quadriceps force (FQ), tibio-femoral joint reactive force (FT), and the patello-femoral joint reactive force (FP).The results obtained from this investigation show that the quadriceps and joint reactive forces are greater at higher degrees of knee flexion. The contact forces at the tibio-femoral and patello-femoral are both functions of quadriceps force, and the quadriceps force required to maintain static equilibrium in a flexed-knee stance is a function of body weight and the angle of knee flexion.