Modeling and Stress Analysis of Human Lumbar Spine

Human lumbar spine will produce a certain deformation with forward bending. Once the pressure and torque are too large, it will cause serious health hazards to the human body, such as lumbar deformation. CT scans of healthy male lumbar vertebra with a body weight of 65kg were selected and imported into Mimics software, in which the plane scan data were converted into dioramas. And then the models were imported into Geomagic Studio and, including pruning and stitching of the curved surfaces. These optimized graphics were imported into Solidworks to sepreate cortical and cancellous bones, and intervertebral discs model were also established. Finally, the whole model was imported into Ansys software. Using the spring unit in Ansys, different ligament structures can be simulated and given different material properties. The stress nephogram and displacement nephogram of human lumbar spine were obtianed under the forward flexion to explore the deformation and injury of lumbar spine. It can be intuitively reflected that the deformation and damage of lumbar spine become severe with the increase of body weight. On the other way, with the same body weight, the deformation increased and damage of lumbar spine become more serious while forward bending.