Geometry generation and benchmarking of a complete multibody model of the upper limb

A detailed detailed multibody biomechanical model of the upper limbs, developed using a free general-purpose multibody solver is extended to include the complete modeling of the shoulder girdle. The primary purpose of the model is to capture the biodynamic impedance properties of the helicopter pilot’s body at the control inceptors, in order to overcome the limitations of classical approaches based on experimentally identified transfer functions. Therefore the adaptation of the model to different body morphologies, preserving the validity of the results, is critically important. A general procedure to generate the model parameters starting from the anthropometric data of the pilot has been introduced. Different population of subjects have been generated and the outputs of the model compared with data available in literature with respect to moment generation about the flexion-extension of the elbow and forearm prono-supination.