A Tilting Platform as a Sub-injury Motion for Ankle Sprain Studies

Abstract

Ankle sprains are amongst the most prevalent musculoskeletal system injuries, impacting athletes of all ages and all sporting activities, with most ankle sprains resulting from stress during inversion, plantar flexion, or supination of the foot. One method of simulating ankle sprain motion is through sub-injury trials using a platform that can force the foot to invert, simulating an ankle sprain motion repeatedly on human participants without causing actual injury. This study aims to design and fabricate a tilting platform that uses a DC motor to enable such research to be performed. The tilting platform, which is capable of inverting the foot to the desired angle of inversion to simulate ankle sprain motion, has been constructed, and a total of 20 sets of data have been collected from four participants to ensure that the platform is able to simulate ankle sprain motion. The design, material, structure, and mechanism of the tilting platform was made to ensure the participants’ safety and not cause real injury to the participants. Comparison of sub-injury trial using the platform and kinematic data from OpenSim has shown that the tilting platform is capable of simulating real-life ankle sprain motion for data analysis, which paves the way forward for further studies on ankle sprain.