New dynamic muscle fatigue model to limit musculo-skeletal disorder

Abstract

Muscle fatigue is one of the reasons leading to Musculo-Skeletal Disorder (MSD). Automation in industries reduced the human effort, but still there are many industries in which human have to do complex and repetitive tasks manually. The society/companies have to pay attention on this issue due to the new laws on penibility or repetitive tasks. The objective of this paper is to experimentally validate a new dynamic muscle fatigue model using electromyography (EMG) and Maximum voluntary contraction (MVC). A new model is developed by introducing a co-contraction factor 'n' in the Ruina Ma's dynamic muscle fatigue model. The experimental data of ten subjects are used to analyze the muscle activities and muscle fatigue during extension-flexion motion of the arm on a constant absolute value of the external load. The findings for co-contraction factor shows that the fatigue increases when co-contraction area decreases. The dynamic muscle fatigue model is validated using the MVC data, fatigue rate and co-contraction factor of the subjects.