Active muscle torques about long-bone axes of major human joints.

Incorporaton of the activee muscle torques into the multisegmented total-human-body models can be considered the next major improvement of These models. The first step toward achievement of this goal is to obtain active muscle torque data about long-bone axes of major human joints. This paper presents results of research conducted to collect such data at the shoulder, hip, elbow, knee, and ankle joints. Active muscle torques were determined about the long-bone axes of the upper arm, upper leg, lower arm, and lower leg, which are the body segments associated with the major joints mentioned. Numerical results are presented for three male subjects for a specific number of body segment orientations with respect to the joints. It was concluded that, although there are intra- and inter-subject variations for the maximum values of the acrive muscle torques about long-bone axes, there are some trends one can establish for the behavior of the magnitudes of these torques.