According to the company, using composites in the Lunaris prosthesis can reduce its weight and improve performance when compared to earlier all-metallic designs.
“The Lunaris was a unique and challenging design project, being our first composite medical prosthesis design, and also a much smaller structure than we typically analyse,” said Katleen Mattheus, composite lead engineer, Solico. “Our FE [finite element] analysis allowed us to predict the stiffness of various set-ups and model how the foot would behave, speeding up the optimisation process and reducing the real life test time required. The final design was load tested in our lab to verify the strength and real-life characteristics of the composite parts.”
