Tibiofemoral Cartilage Contact Pressures in Athletes During Landing: A Dynamic Finite Element Study

Abstract

Cartilage defects are common in the knee joint of active athletes and remain a problem as a strong risk factor for osteoarthritis. We hypothesized that landing during sport activities, implication for sub-failure ACL loading, would generate greater contact pressures (CP) at the lateral knee compartment. The purpose of this study is to investigate tibiofemoral cartilage CP of athletes during landing. Tibiofemoral cartilage contact pressures (TCCP) under clinically relevant anterior cruciate ligament sub-failure external loadings were predicted using four dynamic explicit finite element (FE) models (2 males and 2 females) of the knee. Bipedal landing from a jump for five cases of varying magnitudes of external loadings (knee abduction moment, internal tibial torque, and anterior tibial shear) followed by an impact load were simulated. Lateral TCCP increased by up to 94% (under meniscus area) and %30 (under femoral condyle area) when external loads were incorporated with impact load in all the models compared to impact-only case. In addition, FE model predicted higher CP in lateral compartment by up to 37% (11.87MPa vs. 8.67MPa) and 52% (20.19MPa vs. 13.29MPa) for 90% and 50% percentile models, respectively. For the same percentile populations, CPs were higher by up to 25% and 82% in smaller size models than larger size models. We showed that sub-failure ACL loadings obtained from previously conducted in vivo study led to high pressures on the tibiofemoral cartilage. This knowledge is helpful in enhancing neuromuscular training for athletes to prevent cartilage damage.

Soft Tissue Mechanics in Hip Distraction after Total Knee Arthroplasty: A Finite Element Analysis

“…A hyperelastic, neo-Hookean material model was applied to the ACL, PCL, MCL, and LCL [22]. The other soft tissue structures of the knee complex were modeled using truss elements with linear elastic material properties based on previous studies [23].…”

“…The other soft tissue structures of the knee complex were modeled using truss elements with linear elastic material properties based on previous studies [23].…”

Effect of Whole Body Parameters on Knee Joint Biomechanics: Implications for ACL Injury Prevention During Single-Leg Landings

“…The calculation of the ACL reference length was explained in our previous work. 17 Two points were selected on the anteromedial bundle of the ACL with approximately 10-mm distance, according to the in vitro strain gauge length in the study 3 used for our validation work. 17 The length after preconditioning the ligament in the first step of our current FE simulations was used as the reference length for strain calculations.…”

“…Details on model development and validation were presented in our previous work. 17 FE simulations consisted of 2 steps (Figure 3). In the first step, the knee was flexed to the amount of flexion at initial contact (IC).…”

Influence of Graft Positioning during the Latarjet Procedure on Shoulder Stability and Articular Contact Pressure: Computational Analysis of the Bone Block Effect

“…Mesh density was defined based on sensitivity analyses in which the peak translational force was evaluated for the healthy glenohumeral joint model and the peak contact pressure was evaluated for the glenohumeral joint model with a 20% glenoid bone defect. Mesh refinement, defined from average element sizes of 0.8 mm to 0.2 mm, with 0.1 mm increments, was stopped when results changed by less than 5% in two consecutive iterations [ 29 , 30 ]. The total number of elements and nodes resulting from the selected mesh density ranged from 1,775,000 to 1,840,000 and from 350,000 to 390,000, respectively, in all Latarjet finite element models.…”