Effect of Dropping Height on the Forces of Lower Extremity Joints and Muscles during Landing: A Musculoskeletal Modeling

The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of dropping height on the forces of joints and muscles in lower extremities during landing. A total of 10 adult subjects were required to landing from three different heights (32 cm, 52 cm, and 72 cm), and the ground reaction force and kinematics of lower extremities were measured. Then, the experimental data were input into the AnyBody Modeling System, in which software the musculoskeletal system of each subject was modeled. The reverse dynamic analysis was done to calculate the joint and muscle forces for each landing trial, and the effect of dropping-landing on the results was evaluated. The computational simulation showed that, with increasing of dropping height, the vertical forces of all the hip, knee, and ankle joints, and the forces of rectus femoris, gluteus maximus, gluteus medius, vastii, biceps femoris and adductor magnus were all significantly increased. The increased dropping height also resulted in earlier activation of the iliopsoas, rectus femoris, gluteus medius, gluteus minimus, and soleus, but latter activation of the tibialis anterior. The quantitative joint and muscle forces can be used as loading conditions in finite element analysis to calculate stress and strain and energy absorption processes in various tissues of the lower limbs.