Biomechanical Study of Personalized Buffer Insoles for Heel Pain / 医用生物力学

ABSTRACT

Objective To study the effect from personalized insoles with different structural heel pads on plantar stress concentration of patients with heel pain. Methods Base on statistics and finite element analysis method, the finite element model of foot and personalized insoles for patient with heel pain were established. The effects from different insoles on stress of soft tissues and plantar fascia were simulated. Results The internal stress of plantar soft tissues was higher than that of plantar epidermis, and the stress of the third plantar fascia was the highest. During barefoot standing, the internal peak stress of plantar soft tissues was 1.34 times of plantar epidermis, and the stress of the third plantar fascia was 1.50 MPa. The result of orthogonal experiment showed that the optimized insole model could reduce the internal peak stress of plantar soft tissues by 51%, meanwhile relieve the stress of the third plantar fascia by 11.3%. Conclusions The optimum scheme of personalized buffer insole is the design of vertical ellipse and honeycomb groove. Such structure can assist the absorption or buffering of concussion from calcaneal fat pad, and relieve the plantar stress concentration and tension of the plantar fascia. This study is helpful to understand plantar stress distributions of patients with heel pain, which is of great significance to the study of pathology and prevention of heel pain.