Effect of body weight on the L3 lumbar vertebra with lumbar spinal stenosis in different body-bending degrees: a finite element simulation (Q2143534)

The authors are concerned with the numerical study of the lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS) as a common disorder of the human lumbar spine. The computational domain is the CT scan image of the three-dimensional L3 lumbar spine. The biomechanical simulation of the human lumbar spine (L3) was carried out using the stress equilibrium equation, the strain-displacement relation, and the generalized Hooke's law. A usual Galerkin FEM (implemented with ANSYS 6.0 commercial software) is applied to this system of differential equations. The algebraic linear system produced by FEM is solved by the COMSOL Multiphysics package. The displacement and the von Mises stress for an intact lumbar spine as well as for a spine with LSS are computed and compared.