Abstract
In soft bodied animals (both vertebrates and invertebrates), the movement of parts occurs and is controlled by hydrostatic skeletons which include a fluid filled cavity surrounded by muscles. The pressure of fluid along with the movement of muscles can cause a change in shape. However, the movements of the tongues of lizards and humans, octopus arms, trunks of elephants etc., are controlled by muscular hydrostats, which are tightly packed three-dimensional arrays of muscle fibers surrounded by connective tissues. Since the bulk modulus of the muscles that make up muscular hydrostat is large (comparable to the bulk modulus of water), small changes in the volume of muscular hydrostats result in significant forces that cause different movements like bending, shortening, elongation, etc.
This project attempts to study the biomechanics of muscular hydrostats. Due to the size of these muscular hydrostats and the magnitude of the bulk modulus, simulations of these entities need to be run at very fine time steps. As a result, simulation of even small intervals of motion require a lot of time to simulate. Hence, this project aims to derive an empirical solution for the muscle damping factor of the muscular hydrostat. This will lead to improved performance of simulations involving assemblies of muscular hydrostats. The project will use C++ for these simulations and MATLAB for data analysis.