Editorial

摘要

In recent years, there has been progressively increasing interest in the application of multi-body dynamics to the area of biomechanics, in particular human motion analysis. This interest was very much evident in two recent successful symposia held in 2011; the EUROMECH Colloquium 511: Biomechanics of Human Motion, Ponta Delgada, Azores, Portugal, and the IUTAM Symposium on Human Body Dynamics: From Multibody Systems to Biomechanics, Waterloo, Canada. It has also become commonplace in all the main multi-body dynamics events (ECCOMAS Thematic Conference Multibody Dynamics; ASME Int. Conference on Multibody Systems, Nonlinear Dynamics, and Control; Asian Conference on Multibody Dynamics) to include a session on bio-mechanic applications. This tradition has also been taken up by the two editions of the recently initiated Joint International Conference on Multibody System Dynamics (IMSD), the last of which was held in Stuttgart in May 2012. The authors of several presentations at the biomechanics session of this event were asked to extend their contributions and submit them through the peer-review process of the Journal of Multi-body Dynamics for possible publication within a thematic special issue on "Application of Multibody Dynamics to Biomechanics".