Caracterização mecânica de uma órtese de membro inferior produzido com policloreto de vinila (PVC)

Abstract

People with musculoskeletal and movement disorders are often users of lower limb orthosis. The supralodal orthosis or ankle-foot orthosis are used by people with spastic cerebral palsy in order to prevent deformity of the equine foot. Currently polypropylene (PP) among other materials is the most used for making these bracing, but there is a material that has similar characteristics to PP, plastic, thermomoldable and cheaper, polyvinyl chloride (PVC). From this, this work aimed at a prototype of rigid suropodalic orthosis using PVC, evaluate its mechanical properties and compare with commercial PVC. This work is a qualitative exploratory approach and the applied methodology was the production of a PVC orthosis using the technique of molding with thermal blower and the accomplishment of tensile and flexion tests of the produced bracing and the commercial PVC. The results showed that there was an increase in the tensile strength and flexural strength of PVC orthosis specimens compared to commercial PVC tube specimens. It is concluded that the manufacturing process altered the mechanical properties of commercial PVC and PVC orthosis presented interesting properties.