Dynamic Modeling of Human Articulating Joints

Abstract

Biodynamic simulation of the response of the total human body to external forces provide essential input for the establishment of the injury prediction criteria and subsequent design and development of crash protection systems. The most sophisticated versions of the total-human-body models are articulated and multi-segmented to simulate all the major articulating joints and segments of the human body. A brief review of the mathematical models of the human body was provided by the first author (1,2) and an extensive treatment of the same subject can be found in (3). Because of the extreme complexity of incorporating articulating joint structures possessing realistic geometries and ligament behavior to the multi-segmented models of the total human body, these models, thus far, have been employing simple geometric shapes for their joints.