An Open-Source Toolbox for Surrogate Modeling of Joint Contact Mechanics

— Goal: Incorporation of elastic joint contact models into simulations of human movement could facilitate studying the interactions between muscles, ligaments, and bones. Unfortunately, elastic joint contact models are often too expensive computationally to be used within iterative simulation frameworks. This limitation can be overcome by using fast and accurate surrogate contact models that fit or interpolate inputoutput data sampled from existing elastic contact models. However, construction of surrogate contact models remains an arduous task. The aim of this paper is to introduce an opensource program called Surrogate Contact Modeling Toolbox (SCMT) that facilitates surrogate contact model creation, evaluation, and use. Methods: SCMT interacts with the third party software FEBio to perform elastic contact analyses of finite element models and uses Matlab to train neural networks that fit the input-output contact data. SCMT features sample point generation for multiple domains, aut...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2016
• Where: TBE
• Authors: Ilan Eskinazi, Benjamin J. Fregly
• Keywords: TBE 2016