Comparison of mechanical response of knee joint with healthy and damaged femoral cartilage

Abstract

During everyday activities cartilage experiences high loads, stresses, deformations, and contact forces. Sometimes, those activities can lead to permanent damage, such as focal lesions. Focal cartilage lesions have been associated with the progressive degeneration of the surrounding cartilage tissue. This paper aims to compare the mechanical response of the knee joint and femoral cartilage using finite element models during the stance phase of the gait cycle. Our model, developed from MRI scans, has been used to compare the mechanical response of the knee joint with healthy and damaged femoral cartilage. The location of the lesion was above the anterior section of the lateral meniscus. Comparison of the obtained results has shown that having a lesion in the previously mentioned location leads to a significantly higher peak Von Mises stress values.