Design and development of customized elbow orthosis using additive manufacturing

Abstract

The orthosis is an assistive device to help people with disabilities. Orthosis, further known as braces, is used to support and modify the characteristics of human neuromuscular and musculoskeletal systems. In this study, elbow hyperextension is considered a significant cause of hand deformity. The elbow hyperextension occurs when the elbow joint in hand is being bend beyond its normal range of motion. Most commonly, orthosis was employed to treat the elbow hyperextension externally. In recent times, elbow orthosis design is customized ergonomically to fit a specific patient. The design is based on the customized profile of the human hand from the three-dimensional (3D) scanner. Sense 3D body scanner is used for scanning the human hand and 3D modeling of orthosis is done in SolidWorks. In order to reduce material consumption, topological optimization was performed. A developed novel mechanism was validated for failure analysis. The developed elbow orthosis is produced by additive manufacturing processes namely fused deposition modeling (FDM) and PolyJet technology. In FDM, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene material has been used whereas in the case of PolyJet printing, vero white material is used. The developed ergonomically designed orthosis can be worn for a long period of time without causing pain and therefore curing time is faster. A significant advantage of this proposed elbow orthosis is a self-operated novel mechanism.