The effect of perturbing body segment parameters on calculated joint moments and muscle forces during gait

This study examined the effect of body segment parameter (BSP) perturbations on joint moments calculated using an inverse dynamics procedure and muscle forces calculated using computed muscle control (CMC) during gait. BSP (i.e. segment mass, center of mass location (com) and inertia tensor) of the left thigh, shank and foot of a scaled musculoskeletal model were perturbed. These perturbations started from their nominal value and were adjusted to ±40% in steps of 10%, for both individual as well as combined perturbations in BSP. For all perturbations, an inverse dynamics procedure calculated the ankle, knee and hip moments based on an identical inverse kinematics solution. Furthermore, the effect of applying a residual reduction algorithm (RRA) was investigated. Muscle excitations and resulting muscle forces were calculated using CMC. The results show only a limited effect of an individual parameter perturbation on the calculated moments, where the largest effect is found when perturbing the shank com (MScom,shank, the ratio of absolute difference in torque and relative parameter perturbation, is maximally −7.81 N m for hip flexion moment). The additional influence of perturbing two parameters simultaneously is small (MSmass+com,thigh is maximally 15.2 N m for hip flexion moment). RRA made small changes to the model to increase the dynamic consistency of the simulation (after RRA MScom,shank is maximally 5.01 N m). CMC results show large differences in muscle forces when BSP are perturbed. These result from the underlying forward integration of the dynamic equations.