ABSTRACT
Vaginal delivery is considered to be the leading cause of pelvic floor dysfunction. When in need, the instrument to assist the mother in carrying out vaginal delivery is a vacuum extractor. In this study, initial considerations for numerical simulations of assisted vaginal delivery were analyzed. Therefore, numerical simulations were done with a Finite Element Method of the pelvic floor and the fetus in order to evaluate stresses and strains in maternal pelvic floor muscles. The analysis of the graphics obtained show that for a vertical displacement of the fetal head of approximately 60 mm, the maximum stress in the pelvic floor muscles were 0.82 and 0.29 MPa for a normalized distance of 0 and 0.47 respectively. As for strains, the maximum values were 0.70 and 0.49 for the same values of normalized distances of stresses. These maximum values correspond to muscles that are associated with injuries that occur during childbirth.
