Comparison of male and female lower limb segment inertial properties.

Many studies have examined human segmental inertial parameters, but these studies have focused more on male rather than female data. The purpose of this study was to determine the lower limb segmental inertial parameters for a large sample (n>1500) of both males and females. The participants in this study were those measured as part of a survey of the anthropometry of US army personnel. The sample comprised 1774 males (mean height 1.756±0.079 m, mean mass of 78.49±0.11 kg, and mean age of 27.21±6.81 years), and 2208 females (mean height 1.629±0.072 m, mean mass of 62.01±0.08 kg, and mean age of 26.18±5.70 years). Anthropometric measurements were used to determine the inertial properties of the lower limb segments by modeling them as series of geometric solids. An analysis of variance revealed that the normalized inertial parameters for each of the segments were statistically significantly different (p>0.001) between the two groups. The time for each segment to swing through the range of motion of the swing phase of gait, produced shorter swing times for the male segments. The differences between the segmental inertial properties for the sexes have implications for how these parameters are customized to experimental subjects.