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PhD project: Passive skeletal muscle form and function: Engineering insights from Zoology
The School of Engineering at Trinity College Dublin is pleased to announce a part funded Ph.D. position in
Musculoskeletal Biomechanics, available immediately. The passive mechanical properties of muscle tissue are
important for many biomechanics applications, including impact biomechanics, surgical simulation and
rehabilitation engineering. However, significant gaps remain in our understanding of the three-dimensional
response of skeletal muscle tissue to applied loading. Apart from the nonlinearity, anisotropy and viscoelasticity
associated with soft biological tissues, it has recently been observed that the stress response of skeletal muscle to
stretching in both the fibre and cross-fibre directions is two orders of magnitude stiffer for tension than
compression, see Fig 1. Conventional fibre-reinforced composite theory fails to capture this. Instead, the work
proposed here will test the novel hypothesis that the passive mechanical behaviour of skeletal muscle tissue is
dominated by soft but incompressible muscle fibres surrounded by stiff but initially wavy collagen fibres of the
connective tissues. This hypothesis will be examined using a micro-structural and mechanical study of different
muscles from a variety of species. This will provide comparative data across a number of systems naturally
adapted to different functions to corroborate or falsify the hypothesis.
Fig 1. Passive skeletal muscle stress strain response for load applied at different angles (α) to the main muscle
fibre direction: (A) compression and (B) tension; note the magnitude differences between (A) and (B)
This project will study the passive behaviour of skeletal muscle tissue across different species to test the
hypothesis that the passive mechanical behaviour of skeletal muscle tissue is dominated by soft but incompressible
muscle fibres surrounded by stiff but initially wavy collagen fibres of the connective tissues. This hypothesis will be
examined using a micro-structural and mechanical study of different muscles from a variety of species. This will
provide comparative data across a number of systems naturally adapted to different functions to corroborate or
falsify the hypothesis. This cross disciplinary Ph.D. project will be co-supervised by Assistant Professor Ciaran
Simms in the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering and Professor Paula Murphy in the
Department of Zoology at Trinity College Dublin.
The suitable Ph.D. candidate should be a first-class graduate in Biomedical Engineering, Zoology or a cognate
discipline, and should be available to commence their Ph.D. at Trinity College Dublin in or around September 2013.
Funding will cover three years of Ph.D. fees and provide a stipend of €8000 per annum, with additional income
from teaching assisting work. Requests for more information should be sent to Dr Ciaran Simms ([email protected]).
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