ABSTRACT
Every movement is caused by forces. In human movements, these forces are either external forces or forces due to muscle contractions. Therefore, muscle mechanics play an important role in models of human movements. Mechanical modelling of muscles can take place at different hierarchical levels: at the sarcomere level; at the fiber level; at the whole-muscle level; or at the muscle-group level. This chapter deals with three goals of modelling muscle mechanics: First, we want to find models using only movement-independent parameters. For predicting individual differences, we have to know the individual input parameter values. Thus, in a second step, we look for the models of specific movements that allow one to calculate the individual parameter values by comparing the model output to measurements of the movements. The third problem is to find individual differences by looking at the sensitivity and at dimensionless parameters of the model.
