07/3 Functional hip joint simulation

		Cartilage stress calculation and visualization

In the first phase of Co-Me, the dynamic response of cartilage and ligaments of the hip joint were modelled, and the interaction of these components was simulated for relative movements of the pelvic and femur bones. Its central goal is to complement the medical kinematics analysis of the joint's limits by quantifying the influence of these soft tissues. The simulated behaviour also leads to a better understanding of pathologic femoroacetabular impingement contexts.

For the second phase the conceptual model of phase I will be completed by adding other deformable structures like muscles and tendons to obtain a fully functional musculo-skeletal model for the hip joint. The global kinematics and local tissue deformation will be simulated thus implying to extend the simulation to handle the deformation of heterogeneous soft tissue models. Another key characteristic of this type of simulation is the highly confined localisation of all the biomechanical components in and around the joint capsule. One central challenge will be the management of the permanent but variable contact between multiple types of tissues, both hard and soft. It will require investigating original methods of deformable tissues contacts tracking, to ensure the stability of the various specialised deformation models. We plan to take advantage of the known musculo-skeletal topology which allows to locally identifying the surfaces in -or close to- contact, for the joint kinematics domain.