The harness piece plays a crucial part in the device as it connects all the components together and locks the device in place while the patient is moving.
According to physicians and patients, the old design works well overall, but they have mentioned that areas such as comfort and versatility could be improved.
For CADing and simulations
For manufacturing the physical piece
(Above): Our team came up with 5 designs in Solidworks. In order to narrow down our best options moving forward, we compared them with one another. Listed here in the table are the designs' most important features and some of their key highlights.
(Above): Images of the simulations conducted in Solidworks. The left image is that of a displacement plot, which simulates how the structure deforms under stress. In this particular design, we can see that the max displacement of 5mm happens around the attachment points by the slots. The right image is that which simulates stress in the structure when max force is applied. The largest stress here is still 10x smaller than the yield stress of our material, so the structure would have a large chance of withstanding the forces applied to it in real-life scenarios.
After ranking and scoring the 5 designs based on our design criteria, our team settled on the top 3 designs (boxed in red in the table above), which we fabricated using the Lasercamm machine. These fabricated prototypes (shown on the right) were presented to our mentor, then shipped to his physical therapy clinics in Michigan to undergo clinical evaluations.
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