The Specification and Evaluation of Personalised Footwear for Additive Manufacturing

Although additive manufacturing (AM) has potential in producing personalised items, such as footwear, it is unknown how to best capture and measure the foot in this context nor the short and medium term impact of such footwear on discomfort and injury risks. Therefore, research is currently being conducted to evaluate the short and medium term use of personalised footwear in terms of discomfort and injury risk; to identify measurement techniques for specifying and evaluating such footwear; and to determine the measurements required to specify personalised footwear suitable for additive manufacturing. Participants had both feet scanned and 16 anthropometric measurements of the right foot taken. A single-blind paired samples experimental design was used and participants were paired according to: gender, age, body mass index and km ran per week. Thirty eight runners (19 pairs: 9 male pairing and 10 female pairing) were recruited. The two experimental conditions were: control and personalised. The personalised condition consisted of a pair of trainers fitted with personalised glove fit insoles that were designed and manufactured from the foot scans to match the exact plantar geometry of the individuals’ foot. The control condition consisted of the same trainers, but fitted with a pair of insoles that were manufactured from the scans of the original insole shape, using the same material and thickness as the personalised condition. Participants were allocated to one of the two experimental conditions and asked to wear the footwear for 3 months. Participants attended laboratory sessions at the start of the study (month 0), halfway (month 1.5) and at the end of the study (month 3) where the footwear was evaluated in terms of discomfort and injury risk. Discomfort was evaluated using a visual analogue scale. Injury risk was evaluated from plantar pressure distribution, rearfoot eversion, tibial internal rotation and peak vertical impact force of the right foot. The proposed paper will present the detailed methodology and approach of the study and discuss the early findings.