Design and Characterization of a Controllable Knee Braces with Magneto-Rheological Damper

Incidence of knee pain is increasing due to the increase in obesity and diabetes cases that led to weight gain for some population in the whole world. Therefore, a good knee support should be designed in order to absorb the load and impact on the knee joints during body movement. Current knee supports are equipped with flexible steel joints that can easily bend to absorb impact and loads from leg movements. In this study, a new approach for a knee support will be explored. The proposed design will be employing a controllable damper unit that is using a semi active Magneto-rheological (MR) device widely used in automotive suspension researches. It is expected that the proposed approach will be able to absorb impact experienced by the knee joints and thus reducing the knee pain. A new design is proposed, and its damping characteristic is studied in order to evaluate its ability to absorb impact.