Design and Development of Artificial Spinal Ligaments for Paediatric Synthetic Spine

A synthetic spine is a model fabricated from artificial materials consisting of the vertebrae, intervertebral discs and ligaments for spinal testing. The synthetic spine overcomes many difficulties associated with biological specimens such as handling, biohazard concerns, high costs, and limited availability of specimens, quality and large inter-specimen variability. This paper presents the design and development of spinal ligaments to mimic the stiffness of the paediatric ligaments for use in the synthetic spine. Spinal ligaments are uniaxial structures in the spine that carry tensile loads along the direction of the fibres. Early in the research, silicone materials were used to cover the whole spinal unit, but it became apparent that the material responses were inadequate. The synthetic spine was revised to use fibreglass tape to more closely simulate the natural spinal structures. The composite design applied in this paper consisted of soft silicone rubber and fibreglass tape to obtain the natural stiffness that normally occurred in the spinal ligaments.