Knee Muscle and Ligament Forces During Drop Landing Exercise

Abstract

This work investigates the human leg muscle and ligaments forces during a drop-landing exercise. An inverse dynamics 2-D model of human leg is used on this ballistic task in order to predict these forces. The model consists of three bony structures, namely femur, tibia, and patella. The joints of the model are the knee joint and the hip joint. The ligamentous structure of the knee includes the two cruciate ligaments, Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) and the Posterior Cruciate Ligament (PCL), and the two collateral ligaments, Lateral Collateral Ligament (LCL) and Medial Collateral Ligament (MCL). The system of muscles of the system includes muscle such as quadriceps, hamstrings, gastrocnemius are included in the model. Experimental data used show a maximum of 100 degrees of flexion angle and ground reaction forces up to 4 times the body weight. The inverse dynamics 2-D model consists of an objective function to minimize the muscle forces, and a set of constraints consisting of equality constraints which are the dynamics equations of the bony structures, and inequality constraints in which all muscle forces must be positive. All muscle forces show a pattern in which they reach large magnitudes at the beginning of landing, decreasing as the subject end the exercise with a standing position.