1. Consider a person standing with their legs slightly bent. as shown in Fig 1.

Each leg upports a constant load P. effectively applied at point A.

Po ture i primarily maintained by a mu cle group on the front of the femur
that attache to the femur and to the tibia ju t below the knee.
(a) eglecting the ma s of the femur, and con idering the knee to be fric-
tionle and to pivot around point B. show that the ten ion Tin the
mu cle i:

Pl sine
T=---

where I i the di lance from A to B and r i the radiu of the knee. equal
to half the thickne of the femur. State a umption that you make.
(b) Suppose now that the same person squats a little further. so that ()
p
becomes () + 8(). This causes a slight stretch in the muscle: initially
it has length L, which becomes L + 8L. If Lis less than the optimal -
length. the stretch will produce an increase 8T in teady-state mu cle _
Muscle tension. It is acceptable to a sume
(area= A)

where A i the mu cle cro - ectional area (constant) and fJ is a pro­

portionality constant. If the leg is to avoid buckling. show that fJ must -
satisfy:
LIP
{J = --2 cos()
Ar

Figure 1
Hint: relate 8L to U). and use the results of (a).
2. A young athlete is practicing weight lifting using his lower leg and foot, as shown in a) analyze the free body diagram of lower leg. Determine the tension force T in
the skeletal diagram in Fig.2. It can be noted that this portion of the leg is lifted by the the quadricep-patella-ligament complex; the flexion angle e varies from O to 90°,
contracting quadriceps muscle attached to the hip at A and to the patella bone at
calculate the maximum tension force.
B. Patella slides freely (no friction) over the cartilage at the knee joint. The patellar
ligament connects patella to the tibia at C. Using the mechanical system shown in the
lower figure to model the lower leg. The quadricep-patella-ligament complex can be
modeled as a soft string sliding on a pulley and it pulls the tibia that rotates about the
pivot of pulley D (fixed pin). The lower leg has a mass of 3.2 kg and a mass center at
E; the foot and the loaded weight has a total mass of 22 kg, acting at F. b) the patella bone has an average transverse cross-sectional area of
(gravitational acceleration constan1 g = 9.8 m/s2) 1.058 x 10-3 m 2 , calculate the maximum stress in the patella in the longitudinal
direction of this quadricep-patella-ligament complex.

c) the athlete has a micro crack of length a = 0.03 mm in his patella bone in the
- transverse direction, will the maximum stress (calculated in question b) cause a
_ fast fracture in the patella? And what is the critical crack length ar for patella
bone? (the fracture toughness of patella Kc = 1.8 x 106 N/m3 2)
Weight

d) Use Paris' law, da = C(Mt, to determine how many times the athlete can
dN
do weight lifting before the cyclic load causes fatigue fracture of his patella bone.
(material constants: 111 = 2.5, C = 2.5 x 10 m(MN/lll ' f )
-6 3 2 25

Figure 2