• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.15 no.7
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• pp.982-994
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• 2001

Commercially available software packages permit to position human models of various geometries in practical scenarios while respecting the anatomical constraints of the skeletal joints and of the bulk of the bodies. Beyond such features, the PAM-Comfort(sup)TM software has been conceived to provide direct access to the muscular forces needed by humans to perform physical actions where muscle force is required. The PAM-Comfort(sup)TM human models are made of multi-body linked anatomical skeletons, equipped with finite elements of the relevant skeletal muscles. The hyper-static problem of determination of muscle forces is solved by optimisation technique. Voluntary stiffening of muscles can be added to the basic contraction levels needed to perform a specific task. The calculated muscle forces obey Hills model. The model and software have been applied in several interesting scenarios of various fields of application, such as car industry, handling of equipment and sports activities.