ABSTRACT
Skeletal muscle tissues play an important role in human body movement. They can generate voluntary forces leading to body motion and provide strength and protection to the skeleton.
Skeletal muscle tissues have a complex mechanical behavior, with the fundamental property of being able to contract without any mechanical influence from outside. This contraction is controlled by the neural electrical stimulation. When given a neural stimulation, the actin and myosin filaments freely slide relative each other, with the calcium ion concentration increased. Thus, cross-bridges are formed between the actin and myosin filaments (Guyton & Hall 2000). The passive behavior of muscle tissues can be characterized by non-linear hyperelastic stress-strain relations (Fung 1981). In addition, the muscle tissues are essentially incompressible and can be treated as transversely isotropic material when the fibers are paralleled to each other.
