Spine and rib cage model in OpenSim Public Forum

[SimTK Admin]

Welcome to the Spine and rib cage model in OpenSim public forum. Feel free to browse or search the topics for helpful information, or post a topic of your own.

[Annie Tang]

Dear Team,
Thank you so much for the spine and rib cage model! As I am pretty new to the software, I may not be using it to the best of its capacity.
I have a case of a professional camera man who has to carry 15kg of video cam on one side of his shoulders for around 2 hours in a day and I would like to find out the load pressure such a lifting has on his lumbar spine, specifically L5-S1, is it possible that I evaluate using your model in OpenSim? How and where should I change the details to the model to generate a result that I need? Any kind ofadvice will be very much appreciated, thank you!

[Jacob J. Banks]

In a word... yes.
The biggest 'issue' would be having some kinematics to track/use. If don't have that you could always just look at it statically.

As adding the video cam, all you would do is add/weld/attach a mass of known inertia properties to where you want on the model simulating the video cam. You could also just add an external force simulating that.

However, given you are new to OpenSim, you may not know what I am talking about. If you do not, I would suggest going through these tutorials:
https://simtk-confluence.stanford.edu:8 ... +Tutorials

After you go through the tutorials (or if you already have), if you still have questions please feel free to reach out with more specific questions. Best,
Jake Banks

[Jacob J. Banks]

Another thing I neglected to state in my initial response... is that it is difficult/not well established how to model fatigue (if you had observable kinematic changes, that would be another thing... could also may enforce some muscle recruitment changes). So keep that mind.
Jake Banks