TITLE:
Development of a Passive Ankle Foot Prosthesis with Manually Adjustable Ankle Stiffness
AUTHORS:
Tafadzwa Dongo, Benard W. Ikua, Daniel Nyamongo Sagwe, Elliot J. Rouse
KEYWORDS:
Passive Prosthesis, Ankle-Foot, Adjustable Stiffness, Toe-Section, Devices
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Therapy and Rehabilitation,
Vol.7 No.4,
October
16,
2019
ABSTRACT: Major advancements have been made
in the field of prosthetics, but devices remain largely out of reach for the
amputee population domiciled in the developing nations, which makes up 80% of
the entire amputee population of the world. The amputees are left to contend
with low function prosthetics that do not mimic the behavior of the natural
lost limb, with the long-term use of such devices leading to physical injury to
the user. This work was aimed at developing a low-cost ankle-foot prosthesis
that affords the user the opportunity to manually alter the stiffness of the
ankle, as well storing energy in a forefoot section to aid push-off in late
stance. In this paper, the design and results of structural analysis performed
on critical parts of the prosthesis are presented, as well as the future
direction of the work.