Spring-like leg models have been employed to explain various dynamic characteristics in human walking. However, this leg stiffness model has limitations to represent complex motion of actual human gait, especially the behaviors of each lower limb joint. The purpose of this research was to determine changes of total leg stiffness and lower limb joint stiffness with gait speed in knee osteoarthritis. Joint stiffness defined as the ratio of the joint torque change to the angular displacement change. Eight subjects with knee osteoarthritis participated to this study. The subject walked on a 12 m long and 1 m wide walkway with three sets of four different randomly ordered gait speeds, ranging from their self-selected speed to maximum speed. Kinetic and kinematic data were measured using three force plates and an optical marker system, respectively. Joint torques of lower limb joints calculated by a multi-segment inverse dynamics model. Total leg and each lower limb joint had constant stiffness during single support phase. The leg and hip joint stiffness increased with gait speed. The correlation between knee joint angles and torques had significant changed by the degree of severity of knee osteoarthritis.
