Design of a conditioner board for measuring axial and tangential force in a knee simulator

Abstract

In order to calculate and measure wear in a knee simulator, it is necessary to acquire the axial and tangential force in the femoral and tibial component. For this, a board was designed to acquire the signal of two load cells. This can measure up to 8000 N in axial force and 900 N in tangential force. Due to the nature of the axial force, signals were added to establish a force limit and avoid mechanical damage to the knee simulator. The board was designed with high precision instrumentation amplifiers used in medical instrumentation and automation applications. In this work, only the electronic design is presented. A design of a compact printed circuit board for conditioning two load cells and get another signals was raised and the card tests will be presented in future works.