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The design of a multi-station shoulder simulator
The aim of this project was to design and manufacture a test rig for artificial shoulder joints. It tested multiple samples of a commercially available design of shoulder implant.
Project leader
Dr Tom Joyce
Dates
March 2009 to September 2011
Project staff
Dr Bing (Lisa) Li
Professor Garth Johnson
Sponsors
Leverhulme Trust
Description
The replacement of diseased shoulder joints lacks the success seen with hip and knee prostheses.
Shoulder joint is the third most common joint replacement procedure after knees and hips.
The results of shoulder joint replacement can be disappointing, particularly in younger patients.
To improve this situation appropriate laboratory testing of existing and proposed designs of shoulder prostheses need to be undertaken. But such a test rig for artificial shoulder joints does not currently exist.
This project builds on the School of Engineering's long history of expertise in shoulder biomechanics.
The first stage was to assimilate knowledge of shoulder joint biomechanics. Then to apply these loads and motions in a test device which needs to be reliable over millions of cycles of testing.
In the lower limb gait serves as an excellent single set of loading and motion conditions, it applies to hip and knee prostheses.
But people use the upper limb and thus the shoulder for a complex range of tasks including lifting, cleaning and toileting
These tasks impose a wide variety of loads on shoulder joints while it articulates through its wide range of motion in several planes.