Investigation of Metatarsal Fracture for Protective Footwear Design

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Injuries to metatarsals (top part of the foot) are common in industrial settings. Most of the injuries are due to**impact caused due to heavy weight falling on the foot, or due to foot being crushed under industrial vehicles**such as forklifts. Protective footwear are being designed to protect the metatarsals from such injury.**About 200,000 metatarsal protectors are being sold every year throughout the world and about 25% of these are**produced by Swenco, a Waterloo based company. However, the metatarsal protectors currently produced by**Swenco are designed with no information on actual protection they need to offer. Their design requirement is**purely based on ASTM standards that do not reflect the actual injury scenario. For example, it is not known**how much impact energy is needed to fracture the metatarsals. Without such information, Swenco cannot**design metatarsal protectors to offer sufficient protection. The goal of this project is to investigate the energy**needed to fracture metatarsal bones under impact and crush loading scenarios.**Sixteen fresh frozen cadaver feet will be tested; 8 in impact and 8 under quasistatic loading. A instrumented**custom test apparatus will be used to apply quasi-static compressive loading on top of cadaver foot and**minimal force needed for metatarsal fractures will be determined. Radiographs will be used to ascertain the**metatarsal fractures. A modified swing pendulum impact tester will be used to impact the feet at different**impact energies using flat bar as an indenter. Using this approach an injury risk curve that relates the risk of**metatarsal fracture to impact energy will be generated.**The information gathered from the tests will be very valuable for the industrial partner to design net generation**metatarsal protectors which are based on the experimental data. Such metatarsals are expected to be designed**for optimal metatarsal protection. This will help the company to market their product better resulting economic**benefit to Canada.