Mechanical Function of the Human Knee Joint Region during Triple Jump by Combined Multi-body Dynamics and Finite Element Analysis

Abstract

Triple jump is a vigorous athletic event with high speed. More generally, for great contest achievements athletes must absorb extremely large and greatly varying impact loads in the knee joint region. Consequently, these loads often cause the athletes to be badly injured. Based on the physical conditions of a common Chinese man athlete, here we proposed a combination of finite element analysis (FEA) and multi-body dynamics analysis (MDA) to simulate a real human triple jump. These investigations were involved in an approach run, a hop, a bound and a jump, where the loading data in the knee joint region were obtained from an MDA and then applied to load a FE modal. Validation was implemented by comparing the calculated against the measured either in the hospital or in the literature with good qualitative agreement. Our findings showed that the maximum resultant force both occurred in the third phase of the triple jump and that the most notable deformation, displacement and the maximum stresses all appeared at the medial sides, especially at the lateral condyle of the articular cartilage. Our results demonstrate the importance of performing MDA as a preliminary step to FEA, and provide an insight into a better understanding of injury mechanisms of the jumpers.