Abstract

Anterior cruciate ligament ACL injury is one of major risks for most athletes ACL injury can be caused by many risk factors such as anatomic risk factors biomechanical risk factors and environmental risk factors In this article numerical and theoretical analysis is conducted to investigate biomechanical risk factors An entire three-dimensional finite element knee model is built based on MRI data Anterior Tibial Translations ATT at different knee flexion angles are simulated by finite element models In the simulations more attention is given to material properties of different knee components and their effects on ACL injury Mechanical response of ACL during sport activities is highly determined by its viscoelastic properties Unfortunately viscoelastic properties of two bundles of ACL will change dramatically even with several hours physical aging As a consequence ACL will experience mechanical ductile to brittle transition due to daily physical aging