Tensile response of the muscle-tendon complex using discrete element model

Abstract

Tear of the muscle-tendon complex (MTC) is one of the main causes of sport injuries (De Labareyre et al. 2005). However, the mechanisms leading to such injury are still unclear (Uchiyama et al. 2011). Before modeling the tear of the MTC, its behavior in tensile test will be first studied. The MTC is a multi-scale, non isotropic and non continuous structure that is composed of numerous fascicles gathered together in a conjunctive sheath (epimysium). Many MTC models use the Finite Element Method (FEM) (Bosboom et al. 2001) to simulate MTC’s behavior as a hyperviscoelastic material. The Discrete Element Method (DEM) used for modeling composite materials (Iliescu et al. 2010) could be adapted to fibrous materials as the MTC. Compared to FEM, the DEM could allow to capture the complex behavior of a material with a simple discretization scheme in terms of concept and implementation as well as to understand the influence of fibers’ orientation on the MTC behavior. The aim of this study was to obtain the force/displacement relationship during a numerical tensile test of a pennate muscle model with DEM.