A Novel Explicit Analytical Multibody Approach for the Analysis of Upper Limb Dynamics and Joint Reactions Calculation Considering Muscle Wrapping

The aim of this paper is to present an explicit analytical biomechanical multibody procedure able to be implemented in the solution of the musculoskeletal systems inverse dynamics problems. The model is proposed in formal multibody analysis and implemented in the Matlab numerical environment. It is based on the constraint kinematical behaviour analysis and considers both linear muscle actuators and curved ones, by calculating the geodesic muscle path over wrapping surfaces fixed to the bodies. The model includes the Hill muscle approach in order to evaluate both the contractile elements’ actions and the passive ones. With the aim to have a first validation, the model was applied to the dynamical analysis of the “arm26” OpenSim model, an upper limb subjected to external forces of gravity and to known kinematics. The comparison of results shows interesting matching in terms of kinematical analysis, driving forces, muscles’ activations and joint reactions, proving the reliability of the proposed approach in all cases in which it is necessary to achieve in-silico explicit determinations of the upper limb dynamics and joint reactions (i.e., in joint tribological optimization).