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Rachel is a senior at Dulles High School. She is currently the Co-President of Dulles SciNOW and the Dulles National English Honor Society and is a co-secretary for the Dulles National Honor Society while being involved in various other honor societies and clubs at school. Rachel has also received the Academic Excellence award three years in a row and the AP Scholar with Distinction award. She has trained in Indian classical dance for 12 years. Through GT Mentorship, Rachel has learned the importance of effective communication and looking at concepts from different perspectives, among other skills, from Mrs. Bryant. She also got a chance to see what engineering truly looks like and has familiarized herself with the thought process that leads to the development of solutions under the guidance of Mr. Tyler Touchet. Rachel Kurian will be attending Texas A&M in the fall, majoring in electrical engineering. She received scholarships to attend A&M as a Posse Scholar, National Merit Scholar, and Brown Foundation Scholar.
"A week in the library saves you a month in the lab." - Mr. Tyler Touchet
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Mentor
Tyler Touchet
From its humble beginnings in a California garage, DJO® has evolved into a billion-dollar company. Today, with more than five thousand employees in more than a dozen facilities around the world, DJO Global is dedicated to enabling people to live their lives to the fullest by providing intelligent medical devices and services from injury prevention to rehabilitation.
Project Abstract
When conducting biomechanical testing of surgical devices to ensure product quality, engineers must choose whether to use cadavers or polyurethane foam models. While cadaver bone best matches the internal architecture of living bone tissue, polyurethane foam models provide reproducible results, which are important for further testing. This study seeks to answer the following question: are polyurethane foam models a good replacement for cadavers in biomechanical testing of surgical devices? A literature study was conducted through Google Scholar, and relevant studies were analyzed to determine how close polyurethane foam behavior is to that of cadaver bone. While none of the evaluated studies produced definite answers to this research question, it was determined that polyurethane foam would be an appropriate model for testing for the following parameters: failure properties, compressive strength and modulus, Young’s modulus, and yield strength. The foam models should also match the dimensions of the bone to be tested on. Cadaver testing is still relevant to determine anatomical structural accuracy and for testing of some properties, like shear modulus and shear strength.
