Multi criteria decision making for optimal below knee prosthetic design

Abstract

In manufacturing prostheses such as blow knee (BK) prostheses, the designer needs to make a proper selection of materials to achieve some requirements according to patient uses prior to fabricating the parts of the prosthesis. Some requirements are low cost, lightweight, durable and withstand the loading environment. Different methods have been used to make such selections based on the optimisation of material properties such as statistical, graphical and computer software. The selection of the optimal material for the socket, shank and foot of BK prostheses is thus considered in this work using the multi-criterion decision-making (MCDM) technique. One of the MCDM strategies is TOPSIS, which was used to choose the ideal material and make a recommendation to design BK prosthesis under different conditions. The common materials used for socket, shank and foot are collected from research works as reference data including polymers, composite, metal alloys, and wood. The results show that pineapple fibre-reinforced composite (PFRC) composite provides light and stiff sockets and PFRC composite provides elastic thought sockets. Titanium alloy (Ti-6Al-4V) provides a stiff shank, and stainless steel (SS 304) alloy provides shock resist shank. Hardwood can be used for low-cost foot, and carbon fibre for shock resistance foot.