Citation

Mital A, Anand S, Nalgirkar M. Int. J. Ind. Ergonomics 1993; 11(1): 67-71.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1993, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Biomechanical models which assess spinal stresses require estimation of moments at various body articulations. One such moment is the moment due to a body segment mass at the segment's proximal joint. Traditionally, this moment is calculated by multiplying the body segment mass, assumed to be concentrated at the body segment's center of mass (point representation), by the distance of the center of mass from the proximal joint. This technical note describes a study undertaken to test the hypothesis that volumetric representation of a body segment's mass, which more accurately represents the distribution of the body segment's mass, would lead to a different moment at the proximal joint than the moment provided by the point representation of the body segment's mass. The hypothesis was tested on the forearm and moment at the elbow joint was calculated by both the point representation as well as the volumetric representation. No significant difference was found between the two values, thus indicating that traditional simplification to calculate such moments (point representation) is reasonable.