Flexibility of bones and connection of the thorax.

Main Forum
1

Good morning,
I’m a beginner at the anybody modelling software, but maybe it is the best way to make the simulation for my master theses.

I like to apply a measured force on the thorax an then simulate the force on the sternum. Therefore I need to know two parameters before it is usefull to go into deep.

  1. Is there a flexibility of the bones (maybe described by an E-modulus) or is each bone described as a stiff connection between two points?

  2. Is the connection between the costal, the sternum and the backbone stiff or is like in reality with cartilage and the possibility of a slight movement?

If 1 and 2 are both not stiff, would it be possible to replace the sternum by two half pieces and calculate the force between?

I hope my description was clear enough and you can help me…

Thanks in advance.

René

2

Hi René,

The bones and segments in AnyBody are rigid bodies, which means they are stiff and do not deform. The AnyBody Modeling System does not include FE analysis facility, but we have an interface to FE sofware. So you can easily get the boundary conditions from AnyBody (joint and muscle forces) and feed them into an FE model.

This combined workflow allows to have much more realistic boundary conditions for the FE model.

And to answer you second question, the rib cage is our current human model is on stiff segment. The 12 thoracic vertebrae together with the ribs and sternum form a single block. It is posible to model it with all bones and DOF, as well as spliting the sternum in two. It is a quite big task but interesting.

Best regards, Sylvain.

3

Thanks a lot…