Mechanical and Electronic Design of a Prototype Lower Limb Prosthesis for Transfemoral Amputation

Abstract

Abstract—In South America, there are few companies that are interested in the creation of prostheses and this, together with the little technological progress, makes patients with transfemoral amputation unable to perform their work. For this reason, the objective of this research is to design a prototype of a lower limb prosthesis for transfemoral amputation that helps the patient's mobility recovery, preventing the wear of the functional knee where an ergonomic design was considered for the patient's comfort. On the other hand, muscular sensors (EMG) were used to detect the intension of the movement, and triaxial accelerometers that capture the movement disturbances in the three axes X, Y, Z. The mechanical design was submitted to the Von Mises stress analysis simulation, these tests were performed in the SolidWorks software and the electronic circuit design was simulated in the Proteus software, where a correct interaction between the different sensors with the actuators of the prosthesis was achieved, in this way, the VDI 2206 methodology was applied. In the results it was possible to simulate the movements of the ankle by the implementation of the Stewart mechanism, also the pieces of the structure were subjected to an analysis where it is shown that efficiently support 68 kg this is related to the height of 165 cm. Finally, it was obtained that the suitable material is aluminum alloy 6061 T-6.