Biomechanics of Joints and Implants: Concepts to Applications

This textbook serves as a comprehensive resource for readers interested in applying the principles of engineering mechanics to analyse the mechanical and structural functions of the musculoskeletal system. Over the past few decades, orthopaedic practice has strongly been influenced by the contributions from mechanical analysis and design. This book sequentially presents basic concepts and applications necessary for understanding a biomechanical system. The book is specially focussed on analysis and design of orthopaedic implants used to treat skeletal diseases and disorders. The book begins with an introduction to the anatomy, physiology, and movements of human body and its mechanical analogy, followed by chapters on basic biomechanics of various joints and spine. It elaborately discusses the gait analysis and measurement techniques and systematically presents the quantitative estimation of musculoskeletal forces (joint forces and moments, muscle forces) using the fundamental concepts of joint dynamics (kinematics and kinetics), with relevant solved examples and exercises to impart basic understanding and knowledge to the students. It also discusses the basic concepts of mechanics of deformable bodies relevant for bone tissue as well as implanted bone structure, common failure mechanisms of implanted bone structure and biomaterials used in orthopaedic implants, and the steps involved in finite element modelling and analysis of implant-bone structures. Other topics covered include various theories, mathematical formulations, the computational framework of bone remodelling and bone ingrowth, mechanobiology based mathematical models of tissue differentiation, and simulations on tissue ingrowth have been presented along with the outcomes of our research activities, which may help and inspire the students to pursue research in this field.

Sanjay Gupta is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, and is leading the Biomechanics Research Group. He earned his Ph.D. degree from the Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands. Subsequently, he worked as a senior research fellow in the University of Southampton, UK, and as a research associate in the Imperial College London, UK. He completed his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Bengal Engineering College, University of Calcutta, in 1989 and master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Jadavpur University, Calcutta, in 1992. He has 26 years of teaching and research experience. His major areas of research include bone and joint mechanics, pre-clinical analysis of implant design, bone remodelling, and mechanobiology. He has fifty international journal publications in this domain of research. He was awarded the INSA Teachers Award 2022 by the Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi.

Ceby Mullakkara Saviour is pursuing his doctoral study in the field of Biomechanics at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. He completed bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering at Cochin University of Science and Technology in 2016 and master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati in 2019. During his master’s degree, he secured the DAAD-IIT sandwich fellowship and conducted his thesis work at Leibniz University Hannover, Germany, from September 2018 to March 2019. His major areas of research include tissue mechanics, orthopaedic implant design, bone remodelling, and mechanobiology.

Bidyut Pal is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology (IIEST), Shibpur. He obtained his Ph.D. degree from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur in 2010. Subsequently, he worked as a postdoctoral research associate in the Biomechanics Research Group (Mechanical Engineering Department) at Imperial College London, UK, and as a postdoctoral research fellow in the Medical Engineering Research Group at Anglia Ruskin University, UK. Dr. Pal also served as a senior lecturer and lecturer in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Portsmouth, UK. He earned his master’s degree in biomedical engineering from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, and his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Kalyani Government Engineering College (Kalyani University), West Bengal, India. His broad research area is computational and experimental orthopaedic biomechanics.

Souptick Chanda is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati. He completed his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering at Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur (Erstwhile Bengal Engineering and Science University, Shibpur) in 2003 and master’s degree in the same discipline from Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati in 2006. His doctoral study in biomechanics at Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, lasted until August 2015. Subsequently, he joined Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, as a postdoctoral research fellow. Dr. Chanda was awarded the Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellowship in 2019 to carry out research on orthopaedic biomechanics at Harvard Medical School, Boston. His areas of research include biomechanics, implant design and optimization, surgical simulations and soft computing.

Kaushik Mukherjee is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. He is leading the orthopaedic biomechanics and implant design research group as well as Sports Biomechanics research lab. His research lies across orthopaedic biomechanics, implant design, musculoskeletal modelling, and mechanics of human movement. Dr. Mukherjee earned his doctoral and master’s degree from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, whereas his undergraduate degree from West Bengal University of Technology (Kalyani Government Engineering College). Dr. Mukherjee pursued his postdoctoral research in the Department of Bioengineering, Imperial College London, UK, where he was also a recipient of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellowship.