Abstract
The main causes of pressure ulcer are the unrelieved contact stresses between the cushion and the human body and the deterioration of the skin condition caused by the impregnation of sweat and urine, especially the region around ischial tuberosities where the local pressure concentration appears. Pressure ulcer-preventing cushion that relieves the pressure concentration in a seated situation could help to decrease the incidence of pressure ulcer. A new concept of such cushion is to fill the cushion with small polyethylene elastic beads, which can redistribute the sitting pressure onto a larger supporting area and help to improve microcirculation. Then the local maximum sitting pressure falls and the skin will be maintained in fine condition. Both the human body buttock thigh modal and the cushion modal are built with ANSYS 14.5 to simulate the sitting condition and analyze the local maximum pressure with different diameters of the polyethylene beads and different filling ratios. The equivalent Young’s modulus of the cushion is analyzed using the homogenization method. With the local maximum pressure for index, the influence of diameters and filling ratios of the polyethylene beads on the pressure relief performance has been thoroughly investigated. Those results could give guidance on the design of cushions with proper material characteristic to lower the pressure ulcer prevalence rate.
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