Numerical investigation of injury mechanism on the human knee of long-jumpers

Long-jump is a vigorous athletic event with high speed. Due to so fast run-up and take-off velocities in horizontal and vertical directions, significantly large and varying impact loads often appear in the knee joint region so that the long-jumpers are often badly injured. Based on the physical conditions of an ordinary Chinese man long-jumper, a combination of finite element analysis (FEA) and multi-body dynamics analysis (MDA) approach was tried analyzing the real and detailed long-jump process. Research results show that the maximum resultant force does appear the second phase of the long-jump and that the most notable deformation, displacement and the maximum stresses are all located at the medial sides, especially at the lateral condyle of the articular cartilage. Our results show the feasibility and effectiveness of performing MDA as a preliminary step to FEA, and provide an insight into the injury mechanism on the Human Knee of Long-jumpers.