The development of a computational multibody knee model able to capture some of the fundamental properties of the human knee articulation is presented. This desideratum is reached by including the kinetics of the real knee articulation. The research question is
whether an accurate modeling of the condyle contact in the knee will lead to reproduction of the complex combination of flexion/extension, abduction/adduction, and tibial rotation observed in the real knee. The model is composed by two anatomic segments, the tibia and the femur, whose characteristics are functions of the geometric and anatomic properties of the real bones. The biomechanical model characterization is developed under the framework of multibody systems methodologies using Cartesian coordinates. The type of approach used in the proposed knee model is the joint surface contact conditions between ellipsoids, representing the two femoral condyles, and points, representing the tibial plateau and the menisci. These elements are closely fitted to the actual knee geometry. This task is undertaken by considering a parameter optimization process to replicate experimental
data published in the literature, namely that by Lafortune and his coworkers in 1992. Then
kinematic data in the form of flexion/extension patterns are imposed on the model corresponding
to the stance phase of the human gait. From the results obtained, by performing several computational simulations, it can be observed that the knee model approximates the average secondary motion patterns observed in the literature. Because the literature reports considerable inter-individual differences in the secondary motion patterns, the knee model presented here is also used to check whether it is possible to reproduce the observed differences with reasonable variations of bone shape parameters. This task is accomplished by a parameter study, in which the main variables that define the geometry of condyles are taken into account. It was observed that the data reveal a difference in secondary kinematics of the
knee in flexion versus extension. The likely explanation for this fact is the elastic component
of the secondary motions created by the combination of joint forces and soft tissue deformations.
The proposed knee model is, therefore, used to investigate whether this observed behavior can be explained by reasonable elastic deformations of the points representing the menisci in the model.