Lattice Shoe Midsole for Foot Overuse Injuries
The 3D-printed lattice midsole is designed to be a prevention and remedy for running-based heel overuse injuries. This is extremely prominent in amateur runners, with over 90% of runners experiencing plantar heel pain at some point in time.
My work in the project focused on segmentation of a CT scan of a heel for testing and designing purposes. Using the segmented foot, FEA was also carried out on the specimen to obtain simulated results with and without the newly designed shoe.
A portion of the lattice midsole was produced at the end of the project, with multiple lattice blocks manufactured as well to allow for testing to be carried out.
Skills Used
CT Image Segmentation
A CT scan of a foot was obtained and was used throughout the project for designing and verification purposes. Using multiple softwares, such as 3D Slicer, InVesalius, Fusion 360 and Materialise Mimics, the final outcome of this section was a segmented heel to be used for the rest of the project.
Finite Element Analysis
The performance of the shoe midsole models had to be verified. This was done in a few steps testing the components in isolation and finally assembling them for a complete test. This resulted in producing stronger lattice structures as well as a more robust midsole structure from the FEA.
3D Printing & Fabrication
Using 3D Printing technologies, initial models of the foot were manufactured to physically visualise the scale of work. Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) was also used at the end of the project to produce the deliverables, the final midsole and lattice blocks.
