A team at Newcastle University’s School of Mechanical and Systems Engineering has just finished a student project looking at improved ‘Ankle-Foot Orthoses’.
The Frangible Surrogate Limb (FSL) was investigated as a potential improvement over the simpler castings used previously. The much higher level of bio-fidelity would be more representative of an actual user and so help in the develop and tuning of such equipment.
The rate of loading and nature of impact is almost at the opposite end of the spectrum from landmine research for which the FSL was originally developed.
For this initial investigation the built in instrumentation to measure axial loading and bending was not employed but is likely to be during the programme which will be undertaken in the next academic year.
Given time, this should be a useful translation of technology from the battlefield environment into a more mainstream role.
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