Degenerative Change And FEA Of Rat Caudal Intervertebral Disc Under Abnormal Curve

Low back pain is one of the universal phenomenon in modern society, and it affected human health as a kind of common disease. Low back pain seriously affects people’s normal live, intervertebral disc degenerative disease and its deuteropathies are common causes of low back pain. Inferior lumbar is supporting the whole upper body weight and it’s the biggest weight loader in the whole spinal. In addition, the poor sitting posture for a long time not only makes the waist continued in an environment of surcharge load but also alters the normal spinal physiological radian. The abnormal spinal curve makes intervertebral disc under the abnormal load for a long time, and aggravate the conditions that lumbar intervertebral disc under overload. Because the real reason, living research for intervertebral disc can only use animals as carrier. So Established animal experiment that rat caudal intervertebral disc under the small angle bending condition to model the situation that the human lumbar disk under the small angle bend because of poor sitting posture for a long time.By animal model can cause the fact of intervertebral disc degeneration, but can’t make a concrete analysis of biomechanics changes. So finally, an intervertebral disc FE model was established in this paper to be a research analysisThe main content of this study are as follows:(1)Using CT scans and reverse engineering technique to establish human lumbar spine segments(L4-L5) geometric structure and restructure each component(nucleus pulposus, endplate, substance of annulus fibrosis, endplate,fiber,4th lumbar vertebra, 5th lumbar vertebra).At last, through the finite element technology to establish finite element model of lumbar spine segment(L4-L5)(2) Through a small angle bend in the rat caudal intervertebral disc to establish animal models which rat caudal vertebrae under abnormal curve.and observed the intervertebral disc degenerative situation in the animal model, finally validated intervertebral disc degenerative disease by imageology and histology.(3)By the experience of establishing lumbar intervertebral disc FE model, a rat caudal intervertebral disc finite element model was established in this paper, and Analyses the biomechanics of main component in the intervertebral disc such as substance of annulus fibrosis, fiber and nucleus pulposus under applying 5°bending angle in this FE model. Then applying 10°, 15°, 20°, 25°bending angle in the rat caudal intervertebral disc FE model to further study biomechanical properties of the rat caudal intervertebral disc in the case of different bending angle.On predecessor studies’ shortage that just only established human intervertebral disc FE model but did not have such animal testing or established animal experimental study without biomechanical analysis from the aspects of the FE technology. In this paper, we start with low back pain is very common in modern life due to intervertebral disc degenerative changes, then analyzed from the perspective of poor sitting posture, established related animal model, at last established the rat caudal intervertebral disc FE model for studying the biomechanical analysis.