Modeling of skeletal muscle: the influence of tendon and aponeuroses compliance on the force-length relationship

The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of changing elastic properties of tendon and aponeuroses on force production and muscle geometry. A three-dimensional, structural, continuum mechanics model of the cat medial gastrocnemius was used for this purpose. Increasing compliance in tendon and aponeuroses caused a decrease in the peak isometric force and a shift of the force-length relationship to the right of the length axis (i.e. toward greater muscle lengths). This result can be explained with the stability condition of the force-length relationship which produced a history dependence of force production that is conceptually in agreement with experimental observations.