A musculotendon model including muscle fatigue

A musculotendon model is investigated to show muscle fatigue under the repeated functional electrical stimulation (FES). The normalized Hill-type model can predict the decline in muscle force. It consists of nonlinear activation and contraction dynamics including physiological concepts of muscle fatigue. A muscle fatigue as a function of the intracellular acidification, pHi is inserted into contraction dynamics to estimate the force decline. The computer simulation shows that muscle force declines in stimulation time and the change in the estimate of the optimal fiber length has an effect only on muscle time constant not on the steady-state tetanic force.