Analysis of Ankle Deflection

Toward the general goal ofpreventing ankle injuries in snowboarding accidents, the E. Wang objective of this project to develop a dynamic system model of a snowboarder and Assistant Professor, assess which model parameters, particularly those attributed to the boot, most Department of Mechanical Engineering, strongly influenced ankle deflections during a forward fall. To satisfy this objective, University of Nevada, a system model was created that included the rider, the boots, the snowboard, and Reno, NV 89557 the snow as components. Through dynamic simulations, peak ankle deflections were computed over realistic ranges of input parameter values for each of the model components. Defining sensitivity as the total change in peak ankle deflection over the M. L. Hull range of a particular parameter studied, results indicated that the peak ankle deflecProfessor of Mechanical Engineering and tion was most sensitive to the boot stiffness. Although lower, the sensitivity of the Chair of Biomedical Engineering, peak ankle deflection to the snow model parameters was still significant, being roughly Department of Mechanical and halfof the boot sensitivity. Increases in both snow stiffness and snow damping caused Aeronautical Engineering, higher ankle deflections. Variations in both snowboard stiffness and anthropometric University of California, Davis, CA 95616 parameters had little effect. Due to the strong dependence ofankle deflection on boot stiffness, the potential exists for mitigating the ankle injury problem through judicious design of the boot.