| Title |
Musculotendon Model to Represent Characteristics of Muscle Fatigue due to Functional Electrical Stimulation |
| Authors |
임종광(Lim, Jong-Kwang) ; 남문현(Nam, Moon-Hyon) |
| Keywords |
Musculotendon Model ; Muscle Fatigue ; Functional Electrical Stimulation ; Model Validation |
| Abstract |
The musculotendon model is presented to show the declines in muscle force and shortening velocity during muscle fatigue due to the repeated functional electrical stimulation (FES). It consists of the nonlinear activation and contraction dynamics including physiological concepts of muscle fatigue. The activation dynamics represents Ca^{2+} binding and unbinding mechanism with troponins of cross-bridges in sarcoplasm. It has the constant binding rate or activation time constant and two step nonlinear unbinding rate or inactivation time constant. The contraction dynamics is the modified Hill type model to represent muscle force - length and muscle force - velocity relations. A muscle fatigue profile as a function of the intracellular acidification, pH is applied into the contraction dynamics to represent the force decline. The computer simulation shows that muscle force and shortening velocity decline in stimulation time. And we validate the model. The model can predicts the proper muscle force without changing its parameters even when existing the estimation errors of the optimal fiber length. The change in the estimate of the optimal fiber length has an effect only on muscle time constant in transient period not on the tetanic force in the steady-state and relaxation periods. |