CHAPTER 4
Mechanics of the
Many professionals interested in human
movement function need information on
how forces act on and within the tissues of
the body. The deformations of muscles, ten-
dons, and bones created by external forces,
as well as the internal forces created by
these same structures, are relevant to un-
derstanding human movement or injury.
This chapter will provide an overview of
the mechanics of biomaterials, specifically
muscles, tendons, ligaments, and bone. The
neuromuscular control of muscle forces
and the mechanical characteristics of mus-
cle will also be summarized. The applica-
tion of these concepts is illustrated using
the Force-Time Principle of biomechanics.
An understanding of mechanics of muscu-
loskeletal tissues is important in under-
standing the organization of movement, in-
jury, and designing conditioning programs.
TISSUE LOADS
When forces are applied to a material, like
human musculoskeletal tissues, they create
loads. Engineers use various names to de-
scribe how loads tend to change the shape
of a material. These include the principal or
axial loadings of compression, tension, and
shear (Figure 4.1). Compression is when an
external force tends to squeeze the mole-
cules of a material together. Tension is
when the load acts to stretch or pull apart
the material. For example, the weight of a
body tends to compress the foot against the
ground in the stance phase of running,
69
D. Knudson, Fundamentals of Biomechanics
© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2003
Musculoskeletal System
which is resisted by tensile loading of the
plantar fascia and the longitudinal liga-
ment in the foot. Shear is a right-angle
loading acting in opposite directions. A
trainer creates a shearing load across athlet-
ic tape with scissor blades or their fingers
when they tear the tape. Note that loads are
not vectors (individual forces) acting in one
direction, but are illustrated by two arrows
(Figure 4.1) to show that the load results
from forces from both directions.
When many forces are acting on a body
they can combine to create combined loads
called torsion and bending (Figure 4.2). In
bending one side of the material is loaded
in compression while the other side experi-
ences tensile loading. When a person is in
single support in walking (essentially a
one-legged chair), the femur experiences
bending loading. The medial aspect of the
femur is in compression while the lateral
aspect is in tension.
RESPONSE OF TISSUES
TO FORCES
The immediate response of tissues to load-
ing depends on a variety of factors. The
size and direction of forces, as well as
the mechanical strength and shape of
the tissue, affect how the material structure
will change. We will see in this section
that mechanical strength and muscular
strength are different concepts. This text
will strive to use "muscular" or "mechani-
cal" modifiers with the term strength to
70 FUNDAMENTALS OF BIOMECHANICS
(a)
t
Compression
Figure 4.1. The principal axial loads of (a) compression, (b) tension, and (c) shear.
help avoid confusion. There are several im-
portant mechanical variables that explain
how musculoskeletal tissues respond to
forces or loading.
Stress
How hard a load works to change the shape
of a material is measured by mechanical
stress. Mechanical stress is symbolized
with the Greek letter sigma (a) and is de-
fined as the force per unit area within a ma-
terial (a= FI A). Mechanical stress is similar
to the concept of pressure and has the same
units (Nim2 and lbs/in2). In the SI system
one Newton per meter squared is one
Pascal (Pa) of stress or pressure. As you
read this book you are sitting in a sea of at-
mospheric gases that typically exert a pres-
sure of 1 atm, 101.3 KPa (kilopascals), or
14.7 lbs/in2 on your body. Note that me-
(b) (c)
Tension Shear
chanica! stress is not vector quantity, but an
even more complex quantity called a tensor.
Tensors are generalized vectors that have
multiple directions that must be accounted
for, much like resolving a force into
anatomically relevant axes like along a lon-
gitudinal axis and at right angles (shear).
The maximum force capacity of skeletal
muscle is usually expressed as a maximum
stress of about 25-40 N I cm2 or 36-57
lbs/in2 (Herzog, 1996b). This force poten-
tial per unit of cross-sectional area is the
same across gender, with females tending
to have about two-thirds of the muscular
strength of males because they have about
two-thirds as much muscle mass a males.
Strain
The measure of the deformation of a materi-
al created by a load is called strain. This de-