Improvement of Foot FE Model Based on the Movement of Bones during Heel Impact

Frontal vehicle collisions often result in foot injury of the front seat occupant. Therefore, it is very important to understand the mechanism of the foot injury. For that purpose, several impact experiments have been conducted using a partial human lower extremity. In addition, recently several impact response analyses using a human FE model have been conducted to understand the mechanism. In the present circumstances, a verified FE model is needed, and the verification of kinematical biofidelity is very important in the first place.

In this connection, a foot FE model (based on an existing human FE model) was improved to create a foot FE model, which can be used for study of foot injury mechanism in this research. And the kinematics of foot bones of the model was verified by comparing the bone movements of the FE model with the movement of human foot during heel impact. The sequential X-ray pictures were used to verify the movement of bones, and the bone locations in the improved FE model was compared with X-ray pictures. Improving the model resulted in the movement of calcaneus, talus and navicular in the model correlating well with the human foot.