On the Damping Properties of the Shoulder Complex

Abstract

Effectiveness of the multi-segmented total-human-body models to predict accurately live human response depends heavily on the task of proper biomechanical description and simulation of the articulating joints. Determination of the damping properties in articulating joints is an important part of this task and constitutes the subject of this paper. A new method which is based on the damped oscillations of a body segment is introduced by considering the shoulder complex as an example. The numerical results for the angular damping coefficients at the shoulder complex are presented for forty different orientations of the arm with respect to torso. The angular damping coefficients exhibit a nonlinear behavior as a function of the arm orientation.