Design and optimization of prosthetic foot by using polylactic acid 3D printing

This paper describes the complete design process of a passive prosthetic foot manufactured of Polylactic acid (PLA). It focuses on the reduction in the weight of prosthetic feet. Most of the prosthetic feet are designed with more weight and material than required. The structure of this passive prosthetic foot is designed and optimized as light as possible by using topology optimization. The topology-optimized model is printed from a Three-dimensional (3D) printer directly rather than interpreting the model using a Computer-aided design (CAD) software. The finite element analysis and the experiments are conducted to validate the structure. The test equipment is designed and installed for simulating the boundary conditions of the Heel strike (HS) and Toe off (TO). Since the weight of the prosthetic directly affects the mobility of patients, the weight of the proposed model is reduced 62 % when compared initial model to the final model.