There exists several numerical approaches to describe the active contractile behaviour of skeletal muscles. These models range from simple one-dimensional to more advanced three-dimensional ones; especially, three-dimensional models take up the cause of describing complex contraction modes in a realistic way. However, the validation of such concepts is challenging, as the combination of geometry, material and force characteristics is so far not available from the same muscle. To this end, we present in this study a comprehensive data set of the rabbit soleus muscle consisting of the muscles' characteristic force responses (active and passive), its three-dimensional shape during isometric, isotonic and isokinetic contraction experiments including the spatial arrangement of muscle tissue and aponeurosis-tendon complex, and the fascicle orientation throughout the whole muscle at its optimal length. In this way, an extensive data set is available giving insight into the three-dimensional geometry of the rabbit soleus muscle and, further, allowing to validate three-dimensional numerical models.

Active and passive experiments on skeletal muscles are in general arranged on isolated muscles or by consideration of the whole muscle packages, such as the arm or the leg. Both methods exhibit advantages and disadvantages. By applying experiments on isolated muscles it turns out that no information about the surrounding tissues are considered what leads to insufficient specifications of the isolated muscle. Especially, the muscle shape and the fibre directions of an embedded muscle are completely different to that of the same isolated muscle. An explicit advantage, in contrast, is the possibility to study the mechanical characteristics in an unique, isolated way. On the other hand, by applying experiments on muscle packages the aforementioned pros and cons reverse. In such situation, the whole surrounding tissue is considered in the mechanical characteristics of the muscle which are much more difficult to identify. However, an embedded muscle reflects a much more realistic situation as in isolated condition. Thus, in the proposed work to our knowledge, we, for the first time, suggest a technique that allows to study characteristics of single skeletal muscles inside a muscle package without any computation of the tissue around the muscle of interest. In doing so, we use magnetic resonance imaging data of an upper arm during contraction. By applying a three-dimensional continuum constitutive muscle model we are able to study the biceps brachii inside the upper arm and validate the modelling approach by optical experiments.

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In the present paper, the aim was to develop a numerical method for optimisation an existing mechanical material model [1] including muscle activation concerning the excitation of skeletal muscles. The modelling idea was a weak and non‐monolithic coupling of an electric current expressed by Ohm's law with a hyperelastic muscle model with transversal isotropic characteristics, see [2]. We confirmed the ability of the proposed model by applying on real reconstructed complex muscle geometry. (© 2011 Wiley‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

Aim of this work is to obtain a convenient data set for the validation of a recently developed three-dimensional constitutive muscle model. Therefore, an optical measurement technique is used to reconstruct a geometrical model of a rabbit soleus muscle. Thus, the muscle geometry and also the generated force characteristics are measured. The proposed numerical model is able to reproduce the experimental results in an adequate manner.