Copyright © 2012 Kyungsoo Kim et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

A general computational model of the human lumbar spine and trunk muscles including optimization formulations was provided. For a given condition, the trunk muscle forces could be predicted considering the human physiology including the follower load concept. The feasibility of the solution could be indirectly validated by comparing the compressive force, the shear force, and the joint moment. The presented general computational model and optimization technology can be fundamental tools to understand the control principle of human trunk muscles.