Projeto de uma órtese para pessoas com distonia focal nas mãos

Abstract

Focal dystonia is a neurological disorder that has no cure and whose clinical manifestation is limited to the twisting of some segment of the body together with uncontrollable movements of the body members. Research is carried out on ways to deal with this disorder in order to control and improve the symptoms presented, with the aim of providing a better quality of life for patients who will use the orthosis. The main goal of this work is the evaluation of possible materials for making an orthosis to people with the clinical picture mentioned above. Dystonic disorders are frequent in musicians, as they perform many repetitive movements, generating tensions that mainly affect the hands. A survey was carried out to identify which were and which are the materials most used by physiotherapy for the elaboration of orthosis, with the following conclusion: carbon steel, titanium alloy, aluminum, polypropylene and ABS. Therefore, these selected materials are evaluated using the SolidWorks software. The von Mises stress and displacement analyzes took into account the physical properties of each material. With the results generated, it appears that metallic materials have greater rigidity and greater weight when compared to polymeric materials, which imposes the observation that thermoplastic materials both high and low temperature have the best mass and elasticity, as they do not generate greater fatigue in an already weakened limb and allow the same functionality as metallic materials. The great advantage of thermoplastics over metals is their weight, the difference between the materials can reach 800%, thus ensuring good support for the hand, without further weakening the limb.