Quentin Sanders, Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering; Assistant Professor, Bioengineering, College of Engineering and Computing (CEC), received funding for: "Fused Filament Fabrication of Customized Continuous Fiber Physical Activity Enabling Prostheses for Children with Lower Extremity Amputation."
The long-term goal of the work is to make high-performance prosthetic limbs more affordable, accessible, and tailored to the needs of active children. To make progress towards this goal Dr. Sanders and his collaborators have three objectives for this research.
First, they aim to identify qualitative and quantitative factors influencing a child's desire to participate in physical activity and predict the corresponding demands on their prostheses.
Second, they aim to quantify the influence of child anthropometry and movement type on mechanical properties of running specific prostheses.
Third, they aim to compare the static and dynamic behavior of continuous fiber 3D printed and conventional laminate physical activity enabling prostheses during different load conditions.
Sanders received $502,222 from the National Science Foundation for this research. Funding began in Sept. 2025 and will end in late Aug. 2028.
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