Characterizing Engineered Skeletal Muscle Rings as Actuators Using Strain Sensing Methods

A novel instrument was designed to characterize a force exertion model of engineered skeletal muscle rings. The instrument uses strain gauges to transduce a muscle ring contraction and has a verified resolution of 5 μN and 1.4 μm over the ranges of 5 μN and 1400 μm respectively. Experiments were carried out with four muscle ring specimens at six different structural stiffnesses. Each ring was excited at 1 Hz for 30 seconds while force and displacement was monitored. It was determined that the relationship between muscle contractile distance and force is related by a negative power function.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Rosado, Laura M.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Culpepper, Martin L.

Statement dc:rights

• Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)
• Copyright retained by author(s)

Licence dc:rights.uri

• https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/158858

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/158858