Knowledge-based parametric CAD models of configurable biomechanical structures using geometric skeletons

This paper presents an original development of knowledge-based parametric CAD models related to configurable biomechanical structures by using an emerging modelling approach, skeleton-based modelling. Over the last decades, new geometric modelling approaches have been introduced to promote top-down or bottom-up modelling strategies even both in various engineering domains, therefore facilitating collaboration and knowledge integration. A similar effort in biomechanics still exists with such approaches in CAD application. Biomechanics is considered as a bridge discipline between medicine and mechanical engineering, which enables the geometric representation and numerical simulation of biomechanical structures based on mechanical constraints. Some mathematical models of the human body - which predict the behaviour of such mechanical structures and include the main geometric parameters and specific material properties of its components - have been proposed over the last decade in order to be the most biofidelic as possible. The development of accurate biomechanical models requires a particular attention to the shape, size and more generally the anthropometry of the geometry. Even if these models use to simulate the average population with a 50th percentile geometry, it becomes critical to develop robust and configurable models, including geometric and structural characteristics of a given population, in a parametric and central manner. The main objective is to develop knowledge-based parametric CAD models for further numerical simulations. The proposed approach reuses in part a skeleton-based modelling approach - already successfully applied in product geometric modelling - and extends it to integrate knowledge captured from the anatomical definition and behaviour of the human body. As such, to demonstrate the applicability and the relevance of the proposed approach, a human hand is introduced as a biomechanical case study and defined within a developed knowledge-based engineering application embedded in a CAD system. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.