Estimation of muscle and joint forces in the human lower extremity during rising motion from a seated position

Abstract

Biomechanical models are often employed to predict in vivo muscle or joint forces in the human body because measuring these forces is difficult. Even though the rising motion from a seated position frequently occurs in daily life and the force acting on the knee joints during the motion is important for aged or infirmed people, limited studies related to the motion have been conducted. This study aims to propose a numerical procedure to estimate the muscle and joint forces in the human lower extremity during rising motion from a seated position. The human lower extremity is idealized as a multibody system in which the Hill-type muscle force model is employed. The multibody system consists of four bodies (shank, thigh, pelvis, and upper body), three revolute joints, and ten forces. The motion of the multibody system is assumed constrained to the sagittal plane, and the muscles in the human lower extremity are idealized by nine action/reaction forces. The nine forces are determined by minimizing the metabolic energy, which is consumed during the rising motion. Metabolic energy consists of the energy consumed by heat generation of muscles and the mechanical work done by muscles. For the accuracy validation of the proposed estimation method, numerical results obtained with the proposed method are compared with existing experimental results.