Biomechanical Analysis of Slope Walking in Young and Older Adults

• Main Authors: ying-yi ,liao, 廖英壹
• Other Authors: Cheng-Kong Cheng
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/74917512709448239633

碩士 === 國立陽明大學 === 醫學工程研究所 === 95 === In modern design of barrier-free environment, comparing to stairs slope is more favorite in term of the prevention of falls. During slope walking, slipping are often happened owing to friction force change. The elderly usually have weaker muscle strength, poor balance control ability and slower reaction time. We hypothesize that the elderly have different motor control strategy comparing with the young group. However, few articles had discussed these differences. We recruited 15 young adults and 13 elderly to join our study. Subjects walked upward and downward in slopes with four different inclinations (0˚,5˚,10˚,15˚).The vicon 612 motion analysis system was used to collect kinematic data, two AMTI force plates were used to collect kinetic data. A lower extremity model was developed to calculate three dimensional joint angles and moments. The result showed that for joint angle, age effect existed in most of components in all planes except ankle joint and hip abduction during downslope walking. For joint moments, hip extensor and abductor were found to be greater in the elderly during upslope walking with relatively smaller knee extensor moment and ankle plantarflexor moment. The elderly are tend to flex hip joint more and use hip extensor muscle to propel the body forward. The young group usually use knee joint to accommodate different slopes, while the elderly tend to decrease the use of knee extensor muscles which may be due to the age-related degradation of eccentric control of knee extensor. During downslope walking, larger knee abductor muscle demand was found in the elderly, which might be a compensatory strategy from weaker knee extensor muscle. During downslope walking, the angles between center of mass (COM) and center of pressure (COP) are smaller in old group than in young group, implying that the elderly adopt a more conservative way due to safety consideration. Therapeutic exercise should emphasize on hip extensor and abductor muscle group together with anterior-posterior weight shifting ability. The findings of this study are useful to bring readjustments in rehabilitation methods in order to achieve the goal of safety and energy saving performance on slope walking for the elderly.