Runner and shoe interaction: using finite element modelling and multi-body simulation

Engineering of Sport 15 - Proceedings from the 15th International Conference on the Engineering of Sport (ISEA 2024)

When studying running gait with methods of Multi-Body Simulation, foot contact to the ground is often simulated with simplified contact models or by extracting ground contact force data from experiments. On the contrary, when studying the deformation of a running shoe with finite element modeling, the simulation is often controlled by a load-displacement actuator trying to simulate the influence of the runner on the shoe. Only a few studies try to combine both methods to get the runner's response to a new shoe. We developed a simulation workflow allowing communication between the open-source software OpenSim and the commercial software Abaqus. For example, we will present the runner's response to two different shoe-ground conditions and see the effects on its gait. This could be an advantage in the shoe conception workflow of sports shoe manufacturers, reducing the number of prototyping rounds necessary to develop a new product.