Biomechanics Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Biomechanics, including details on mechanics of living organisms, movement, locomotion, prosthetic limbs.

Using numerical approximation as an intermediate step in analytical derivations: some observations from biomechanics.

Taylor Z, Miller K

Intelligent Systems for Medicine Laboratory, School of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley/Perth WA 6009, Australia.

We present four examples to illustrate the use of a type of numerical approximation as an intermediate step in analytical derivation of seemingly complicated biomechanical equations. The method involves examination of curve shapes to elucidate useful underlying trends, which may otherwise be overlooked through consideration of only the equations themselves. Two examples of the method's use are drawn from recently published results in the area of experimental methods in biomechanics of very soft tissues, and two others are taken from our current work on cartilage tissue mechanics. We think that such observations provide a useful means of circumventing complexity issues when deriving models for biomechanical analysis, and further that the method, while simple in concept, could be effective in a range of biomechanics applications.

Published 10 October 2005 in J Biomech, 38(12): 2497-502.
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