A bottom-up approach to Muscle Mechanics: studying how fast and slow muscle fibres work and generate force and displacement in muscle bundles - Ref: ARUF2018

Muscles exhibit highly complex behaviour made up of thousands of individual muscle fibres, each with different properties, interacting with each other and the surrounding bio-mechanical structures. Linking the fundamental response of a single fibre to the whole muscle behaviour is a challenge. This is especially true for human muscles were developing a realistic scalable computational representation has eluded the biomechanics community to-date. Developing such a model is important as skeletal muscle disorders can be understood (and hence treated) from a fundamental standpoint.

In this project, we shall develop a truly representative patient-specific mathematical model to study how fast and slow muscle fibres, work and generate force and displacement in muscle bundles allowing for locomotion to happen. Once developed full-scale validation studies will be carried out to test the efficacy of such an approach.

Entry requirements
Applicants should have, or expect to achieve, at least a 2:1 Honours degree (or equivalent) in Mechanical/Civil/Aeronautical or a related subject.

A relevant Master’s degree and/or experience in one or more of the following will be an advantage: Biomechanics, Materials Science, Computational Science.

How to apply
All applications should be made online. Under programme name select Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering. Please quote reference number: ARUF2018