Globally, the most prevalent reasons of lower extremity amputation are diabetes, peripheral vascular disease, trauma, tumors and congenital abnormalities. Though modern lower limb prosthetic devices are available in the market, affordability for amputees in developing and underdeveloped nations is a concern, so it is required to make it more accessible with more economical options. This research is an initiative to develop a composite shank tube by filament winding technique as an alternative to conventional metallic tubes for prosthetic components. The composite materials used for this study included glass fiber/epoxy and hybrid fiber (glass + carbon)/epoxy. The composite tubes were manually fabricated and were subjected to axial compression test to estimate the loading bearing and energy absorption capacities. The composite's material properties were determined as per ASTM standards. The obtained properties and experimental data were used to carry out simulations for the composite tubes with ANSYS ® 2021 software package under quasistatic loading conditions. Based on the research that was done, the overall performance of Hybrid Fiber tube in terms of peak loads and energy absorption indexes looks good, and there is a high possibility that they could be used as a loadbearing part in a lower limb prosthetic system.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.