Alintay Gorgani (s1947214), Jelmer Klink (s1997580) and Julia Wezendonk(s1990799) Group 45

1 Report DPPM 1
1.1 Analysis & Design
1.1.1 Introduction
A shoulder is one of the most complex joints in the human body. The shoulder joint is formed where the humurus
fits in the scapula, like a ball-in-a-bowl joint. In the scapula the top of the humerus is able to freely rotate. This
gives the joint a wide range of motion. It does however make the shoulder prone to injuries. Various conditions can
lead to shoulder pain and disability and can ultimately leads a shoulder replacement. A shoulder prosthesis made
out of titanium is currently the most common one, but there are more possibilities. A different concept, which will
be explored in the report, is a joint made out of flexures.

Figure 1.1: Rotations of a

1.1.2 Program of analysis & requirements shoulder
The designed joint must adhere to certain requirements. The designed shoulder
prosthesis must have the same degrees of freedom as the actual shoulder joint. The
design will be made out of flexures, this option will be improved to make it suitable
for a shoulder joint. To improve this possible shoulder replacement, an attempt is
made to design a shoulder prosthesis that can be attached to the body, is light,
strong and is also able to make all the movements of the original shoulder.
A human arm can move in a lot of directions to, so the shoulder must also be able
to act in different directions as well. The shoulder can rotate in three directions, up
and down, forward and backward and from left to right. The rotation angles can be
seen in figure 1.1.1. The next requirement is that the prosthesis has to be able to
hold 75 kilograms of weight.

1.1.3 The design

The design contains a folded leaf spring and a notched leaf spring. The prosthesis has to be translationally
constrained in the x-, y- and z-direction. This can be achieved by combining a folded leaf spring and a notched leaf
spring. A folded leaf spring is constrained in one translational direction and a notched leaf spring is constrained in
two translational directions, the constraints can be seen in figures 1.2 and 1.3. The design can be attached to the
body by screws. The screws fixing the design to the scapula and to the bone in the upper arm.
A disadvantage of the notched leaf spring is that it is only suitable for small rotations, otherwise the stresses
become too high and failure will occur in the notch. A folded leaf spring does not suffer shortening and it can
absorb higher forces that a wire flexure, these are important advantages for the concept. These advantages will
only occur, if the folding line is sharp, if it is not sharp enough there will be stiffness loss due to torsion bending.
Due to the notches, there is a huge stress concentration between the notches, since the surface over there is very
small. To improve this part of the leaf spring, the notched part can be reinforced, by using a thicker part in the
middle of the leaf spring. This will cause that stresses are will not be as high as before, and the loss in stiffness
will not become much higher.
By combining these leaf springs, the concept is translational constrained in the x-, y- and z-direction. The rotational
x-, y- and z-direction are degrees of freedom, which is the intention of the concept. The first concept is shown in
figure 1.4. The final concept, which is slightly different from the first concept, is shown in 1.6. Here the folded leaf
spring is placed a little lower, to let all degrees of freedom act in one point.

Figure 1.2: Con- Figure 1.3: Constraints of a Figure 1.4: The first concept with the folded
straints of a Folded leaf notched leaf spring leaf spring and notched leaf spring combined
spring

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Alintay Gorgani (s1947214), Jelmer Klink (s1997580) and Julia Wezendonk(s1990799) Group 45

1.2 Manual equations

For the simulation we use an approximation of the arm length of 0.75 m. The arm
must be able to lift 75 kg this force can be seen in figure 1.2, so Figure 1.5: Free body dia-
gram
Fg = 75kg ∗ 9, 81m/s2 = 735, 75N (1.1)

Maximum stress in the notched leaf spring:

Stress = σ = F/A (1.2)

Assuming that the force is equally distributed over the notched leaf spring and the
folded leaf spring. The thickness of the notch flexure is two times the thickness of
the folded flexure.
F = Fg = 735, 75N (1.3)

The area is the surface area of the notch, which has a width of 4 mm and a
thickness of 2 mm so the area is:

A = 4 ∗ 10−3 ∗ 2 ∗ 10−3 = 8 ∗ 10−6 m2 (1.4)

The area is only the area of the notch, since the folded leaf spring can not handle vertical forces, since it is only
constrained in one horizontal direction. So the force will only be acting at the notched leaf spring and the stress
will be maximum in the notch itself. The stress is calculated using formula 2.6

σ = F/A = 735, 75N/8 ∗ 10−6 m2 = 91, 96875M P a (1.5)

Surface area of the notched leaf spring:

A = 20 ∗ 10−3 ∗ 2 ∗ 10−3 = 4 ∗ 10−5 m2 (1.6)

The displacement of a beam with a force acting in its length direction, is described by formula 1.9. Since in this
situation, a weight is lifted straight up, the gravitational force is exactly acting in the length-direction of the leaf
springs. Since the folded leaf spring can not resist vertical forces, displacement will only occur in the notched leaf
spring. The material where the leaf springs are made of is nylon. The E-modulus of nylon is 3 GPa.
F
u(x) = x (1.7)
AE
So at the end of the beam, at length l, the displacement is:

F ∗l 735, 75N ∗ 50 ∗ 10−3 m

u(l) = = = 3, 07 ∗ 10−4 m (1.8)
A∗E 4 ∗ 10−5 m2 ∗ 3 ∗ 109 P a

The rotation around the y-axis, where the force is acting at the tip of the notched leaf spring in negative x-direction.
The force acting is 300N. The force is modeled as a moment that acts in on the bottom of the notch itself, the
moment can be seen in figure 1.2 as M, hereby neglecting the ’F’, that was used in the calculation for the maximum
stress. So the distance from the bottom of the notched leaf spring to the the bottom of the notch can be seen as
the arm of the moment. The moment of inertia is the sum of the moment of inertia of the notched leaf spring and
the moment of inertia of the folded leaf spring. Since the upper part of the notched leaf spring is very stiff, this is
considered as a clamped part. So the angle which is determined can be seen as the angle around the top of the notch.

−M ∗ L −22 ∗ 3 ∗ 10−3 m ∗ 300N ∗ 4 ∗ 10−3 m

θ(L) = = = −0, 7463rad = −42, 75° (1.9)
E∗I 3 ∗ 109 P a ∗ (1, 066 ∗ 10−11 m4 + 1, 666 ∗ 10−12 m4 )

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Alintay Gorgani (s1947214), Jelmer Klink (s1997580) and Julia Wezendonk(s1990799) Group 45

1.3 Numerical Analysis

To perform more complex calculations on the prosthesis a model of the concept was made in Spacar. The model
consist of 7 nodes and 6 elements. The humerus is assumed to be a rigid body and can be seen in figure 1.6 as the
blue body. The humerus is attached in the middle of both of the leaf springs. The prostheses is assumed to be
fixed at the shoulder bones by screws. In the model this would be the top of the notched leaf spring and the top of
the folded leaf spring. Any forces that are to act on the shoulder joint will be modeled as acting on the bottom of
the leaf springs. The thickness of both the leaf springs is chosen to be 2mm. The width of the notched leaf spring
is 20mm and the width of the folded leaf spring is 21 mm. In figures 1.7 and 1.8 the deformation of the concept
can be seen if there is a force acting on the concept. In figure 1.7 the deformation in x direction is shown if there
is a force acting in the negative x-direction. In figure 1.8 the deformation in the y-direction is shown if there is a
fore acting in negative y-direction. In the figure the red dot is the point were the stress is the highest, the blue
body color indicates low stresses and the yellow color on the top indicates higher stresses.

In equation 1.5 it is calculated that a force of 735.75 N would create a stress of 91.97 MPa. To verify if the calcu-
lations were done correctly a force of -735.75 N was applied in the z direction on node 1. The resulting maximum
stress is 93.93 MPa this acts in the notch.

σspacar − σmanual 93.93 − 91.97

dif f σ = = = 2.1311% (1.10)
σmanual 91.97

The resulting difference of 2.13 % is less than 5% which indicates that the manual calculations are sufficiently close
to the spacar model.

In equation 1.7 is was calculated that the elongation at the notched leaf spring while a force of -735.75 was acting
in the z direction would be 3.07*10−4 m . Spacar, however gave an elongation of 3.87*10−4 m.

u(l)spacar − u(l)manual 3.07 ∗ 10−4 − 3.87 ∗ 10−4

dif f ˘(l) = = = 20.67% (1.11)
u(l)spacar 3.87 ∗ 10−4

The difference of 20.67% indicates that there is quite a gap between the manual calculations and the calculations
of Spacar. This gap can be declared by the fact, that during the manual calculations, the notch was not taken into
account, while this was in the calculation of Spacar.
In equation 1.10 the deflection of the joint was manually calculated to be -0.7463 radians. To verify the calculations
a force of 300 newton was applied along the x direction in Spacar. At equation 1.12 it can be seen that the difference
is only -2.233 % which indicates that the calculations have been done right.

θ(L)spacar − θ(L)manual −0.7463 + 0.7300

dif f θ(L) = = = −2.233% (1.12)
θ(L)spacar −0.7300

Figure 1.6: Concept undeformed Figure 1.7: Final concept Figure 1.8: Concept deformed in
y-direction