A critical study on the experimental determination of stiffness and viscosity of the human triceps surae by free vibration methods

Abstract

Muscles and tendons play an important role in human performance. Their mechanical behaviour can be described by analytical/numerical models including springs and dampers. Free vibration techniques are a widely used approach to the in vivo determination of stiffness and viscosity of muscle–tendon complexes involved in sport movements. By considering the data reported in the literature, it appears that the visco-elastic properties of the triceps surae muscle–tendon complexes are independent of the modality in which free vibration is induced as well as they do not depend on the composition of the population of subjects submitted to the experiments. This research will critically discuss this important aspect focussing in particular on two studies documented in the literature. For this purpose, two equipments will be developed to reproduce literature experiments under the assumption that the oscillating part of the body behaves as a single-degree-of-freedom system: The governing degree of freedom is associated with the vertical displacement of the lower leg or with the rotation of the foot around the ankle articulation. Unlike literature, measurements are now conducted on the same population of subjects in order to draw more general conclusions on the real equivalence of results and validity of the mechanical properties determined experimentally. Free vibration tests are accurately simulated by analytical models describing the response of each vibrating system. It is found that if the two measurement protocols are applied to the same population of individuals as it is done in this study, values of visco-elastic properties of muscle–tendon complexes extracted from experimental data are significantly different, the differences presenting a convincing consistency. This result is in contrast with the literature and confirms the need to evaluate results of free vibration techniques by taking homogeneous bases of comparison.