Estimation Method of Muscle Fatigue and Recovery Progress Using a Muscular Fatigue Model

This study investigated a mechanism of muscle fatigue and proposed a muscular fatigue model to evaluate muscle fatigue progress under several muscular force patterns. Previous studies have already proposed a muscular fatigue model. However, these previous studies discussed about the condition of the maximum voluntary contraction. The new point of this study is considering several muscular force patterns including muscle recovery progress. This study proposed the method to estimate the endurance time for keeping constant forces considering the physical characteristics. This study also proposed the method to estimate the iteration numbers for keeping constant forces with interval. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed method, experimental verifications were conducted. The experimental results had a good agreement with the evaluation of muscle fatigue progress using the proposed method. The results of this study will provide ergonomically safe and efficient working environments considering the physical properties of each worker.