Modeling of skeletal muscle: the influence of tendon and aponeuroses compliance on the forcelength relationship
The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of changing elastic properties of tendon and aponeuroses on force production and muscle geometry. A three-dimensional, structural, continuum mechanics model of the cat medial gastrocnemius was used for this purpose. Increasing compliance in tendon and aponeuroses caused a decrease in the peak isometric force and a shift of the forcelength relationship to the right of the length axis (i.e. toward greater muscle lengths). This result can be explained with the stability condition of the forcelength relationship which produced a history dependence of force production that is conceptually in agreement with experimental observations.
muscle modeling muscle forcelength relationship muscle architecture finite element analysis computer simulation