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Contributions of individual muscle forces to hip, knee, and ankle contact forces during the stance phase of running: a model-based study

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Abstract

Knowledge of muscle forces’ contributions to the joint contact forces can assist in the evaluation of muscle function, joint injury prevention, treatment of gait disorders, and arthroplasty planning. This study’s objective was to evaluate the contributions of human lower limb muscles to the hip, knee, and ankle joint contact forces during the stance phase of running. A total of 25 muscles (or groups) were investigated based on the OpenSim framework along the anterior–posterior, superoinferior, and mediolateral components of each joint coordinate system. It was revealed that, during the running stance phase, the gluteus medius, gluteus maximus, and iliopsoas mainly contributed to the hip contact force. The soleus, vastus group, and rectus femoris primarily contributed to the knee contact force, while the peroneus, soleus, gluteus medius, and gastrocnemius mainly contributed to the ankle joint force; some muscles simultaneously offloaded the joints during the stance phase. The distributive pattern of the individual muscle functions contributing to the joint load may substantially differ during the running and walking stance phases. This study’s findings may further provide suggestive information for the design of lower limb joint prosthesis, the study of the biomechanics of pathologic walking and running, and the progression of joint osteoarthritis.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank all the reviewers and editors for their valuable comments and works, and gratefully acknowledge the Asian Ergonomics Design Lab at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University for their support for this research project.

Funding

This research was funded by National Key R&D Program of China—Industrial Internet Application Demonstration-Sub-topic Intelligent Network Operation and Security Protection (2018YFB1802400).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Guangdong Polytechnic Normal University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China

    Kaiwei Zhao & Chun Shan

  2. The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Hong Kong

    Yan Luximon

Authors
  1. Kaiwei Zhao
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  2. Chun Shan
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  3. Yan Luximon
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Contributions

Conceptualization, KZ, YL and CS; methodology, KZ; software, KZ; validation, KZ, YL and CS; formal analysis, KZ; investigation, KZ; resources, KZ; data curation, KZ, YL and CS; writing—original draft preparation, KZ; writing—review and editing, KZ, YL and CS; visualization, KZ; supervision, YL and CS; project administration, YL and CS; funding acquisition, YL and CS. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Chun Shan.

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The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

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Not applicable.

Data availability

Data supporting reported results can be publicly archived via https://simtk.org/projects/nmbl_running.

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Zhao, K., Shan, C. & Luximon, Y. Contributions of individual muscle forces to hip, knee, and ankle contact forces during the stance phase of running: a model-based study. Health Inf Sci Syst 10, 11 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13755-022-00177-9

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