Comfort driven design of innovative products: A personalized mattress case study.

Background: Human-centred design asks for wellbeing and comfort of the customer/worker when interacting with a product. Having a good perception-model and an objective method to evaluate the experienced (dis)comfort by the product user is needed for performing a preventive comfort evaluation as early as possible in the product development plan. The mattress of a bed is a typical product whose relevance in everyday life of people is under-evaluated.

Study of the relationships between articular moments, comfort and human posture on a chair.

Background: One of the aspects that influences the sitting comfort is the distribution of the pressure applied to the skin by the seat surface. In the scientific literature, many studies show experimental activities in order to evaluate the influence of pressure distribution at the seat-human interface on the comfort evaluation. The main limitation in seat design is based on the difficulties to predict the contact pressures distribution without prototypes because of the complex interaction among body muscles, wearing, human's anthropometric characteristics, shape and materials of the seat.

Irregular Load Adapted Scaffold Optimization: A Computational Framework Based on Mechanobiological Criteria.

By combining load adaptive algorithms with mechanobiological algorithms, a computational framework was developed to design and optimize the microarchitecture of irregular load adapted scaffolds for bone tissue engineering. Skeletonized cancellous bone-inspired lattice structures were built including linear fibers oriented along the internal flux of forces induced by the hypothesized boundary conditions. These structures were then converted into solid finite element models, which were optimized with mechanobiology-based optimization algorithms.

Novel design for a customized, 3D-printed surgical template for thoracic spinal arthrodesis.

Background: The integration of computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacturing (CAD/CAM) tools and medicine is rapidly developing for designing medical devices. A novel design for a 3D-printed patient-specific surgical template for thoracic pedicle screw insertion, using a procedure based on reverse engineering, is presented.

Methods: The surgeon chooses the entry point on the vertebra.

A study of classroom seat (dis)comfort: Relationships between body movements, center of pressure on the seat, and lower limbs' sensations.

The aim of this work is to define a new method that helps researchers to analyze perceptions of (dis)comfort in dynamic conditions. Recent studies pay considerable attention to body movements, mobility, and stability to measure comfort or discomfort when seated. Most of these discuss the relations between subjective comfort/discomfort and objective measurements (e.

3D Printing of PLA/clay Nanocomposites: Influence of Printing Temperature on Printed Samples Properties.

In this study, the possibility of using a layered silicate-reinforced polylactic acid (PLA) in additive manufacturing applications was investigated. In particular, the aim of this work was to study the influence of printing temperature in the 3D printing process of PLA/clay nanocomposites. For this reason, two PLA grades (4032D and 2003D, D-isomer content 1.

An automatic and patient-specific algorithm to design the optimal insertion direction of pedicle screws for spine surgery templates.

Many diseases of the spine require surgical treatments that are currently performed based on the experience of the surgeon. For pedicle arthrodesis surgery, two critical factors must be addressed: Screws must be applied correctly and exposure to harmful radiation must be avoided. The incorrect positioning of the screws may cause operating failures that lead to subsequent reoperations, an increase in the overall duration of surgery and, therefore, more harmful, real-time X-ray checks.