More than 150 million people worldwide suffer from some form of diabetes. Unlike many other diseases, such as malaria, diabetes is common everywhere but more so in the industrialized countries such as the United States. Diabetes can have detrimental consequences if not controlled. These include blindness, cardiovascular problems, renal failure, and amputations due to foot ulceration.

While, diabetes is categorized as an endocrine system disorder, some of its known complications are associated to the science of biomechanics. Foot ulcers are caused by vascular deterioration due to diabetes, but also directly related to the natural mechanical forces and loads applied to the feet. Therefore, studying these forces, their locations, distribution and their induced stresses might be a key to preventing the occurrence of these ulcers.

This study utilizes the Finite Element Analysis method to investigate the stresses caused by the pressure distribution due to natural mechanical loading on the foot. These mechanical loads, when combined with vascular complications and physiological changes to the structure and tissue of the foot, may tend to increase the likelihood of foot ulceration.

This study found that mechanical stresses are higher in diabetic patients when compared with non-diabetic patients. Ulcers where sometimes forming at area that is closer to high strains occurrences. Theses strains were higher in fat region than in epidermis or dermis regions. A stiffness ratio K was found between diabetic and non-diabetic skin. This value of stiffness was 1.533 which is in the range of 1.0 for normal tissue to 5.0 for progressive stiffened tissue.