A Simplified Model for Contact Mechanics of Articular Cartilage and Mating Bones Using Bond Graph

Articular cartilage is a soft tissue between the mating bones of a synovial joint. It prevents direct contact while facilitating load carriage and lubrication with very low friction and wear. Modeling of a synovial joint involves nonuniform geometry of mating bones, available from point cloud data, separated by cartilage. This work proposes a simplified yet efficient model of a ball dropped in a bowl lined with a cartilage layer, to emulate the contact mechanics between mating bones. Multibond graph submodels for the ball and bowl are used to represent their rigid body mechanics. The nature of the intervening cartilage layer is characterized by a nonlinear C-field. Simulation code has been written algorithmically, directly from the bond graph model. Results indicate that the proposed model holds significant promise for applications in biomechanics.