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Low back pain is a major cause of disability and requires the development of new devices to treat pathologies and improve prognosis following surgery. Finite Element (FE) Methods represent an appealing solution to provide mechanical evaluations of new devices speeding up the design process, as well as evaluating several anatomical scenarios. The aim of this thesis was to develop an accurate FE of the lumbar spine and the evaluation of the variability introduced by morphological and material parameters. The generation of the geometrical model were implemented in a toolbox, the LMG (Lumbar Model Generator), with dimensions based on correlation analyses or subject-specific measurements. It allows the automatic preparation of the FE model, performing the mesh generation and evaluation, assigning material properties, boundary conditions and analysing the results. The FE model of a functional unit (L1-L2) was evaluated and the FE results were in agreement with studies available in literature. Sensitivity analyses on the material properties and morphological parameters were performed and the most influential parameters identified. Moreover, the mechanical behaviour of two devices, the BDyn (S14 Implants (Pessac, France)) and the GsDyn (a device for the paediatric scoliosis developed as part of the Spinal Implant Design project) were evaluated. |
