Dynamic Muscle Behaviours

Abstract

This chapter provides a brief biological overview of fundamental skeletal muscle mechanics and current muscle contraction theories, focusing own previous work. The overview includes dynamical 1D behavior and models of muscle fibers or whole muscles as well as some results on 3D behavior and models of muscles. One of the impressive current results is that in isometric contractions followed by a stretch, the muscle fiber acts like a linear spring with adjustable rest length. While this may suggest simpler 1D models of muscle fiber force development, effects on the level of the 3D muscle might again hamper simple descriptions. More detailed introductions to dynamical muscle behaviours can be found, e.g., in Rode and Siebert (2017).