Impact induced injury to the human head is a major cause of death and disability; this has driven considerable research in this field. Despite this, the methods by which the brain is damaged following non-penetrative (blunt) impact, where the skull remains intact, are not well understood. The mechanisms which give rise to brain trauma as a result of blunt head impact are frequently explored using indirect methods, such as finite element simulation. Finite element models are often created manually, but the complex anatomy of the head and its internal structures makes the manual creation of a model with a high level of geometric accuracy intractable. Generally, approximate models are created, thereby introducing large simplifications and user subjectivity. Previous work purports that blunt head impacts of short duration give rise to large dynamic transients of both positive and negative pressure in the brain. Here, three finite element models of the human head, of increasing biofidelity, were employed to investigate this phenomenon. A novel approach to generating finite element models of arbitrary complexity directly from three-dimensional image data was exploited in the development of these models, and eventually a highly realistic model of the whole head and neck was constructed and validated against a widely used experimental benchmark. The head models were subjected to a variety of simulated impacts, ranging from comparatively long duration to very short duration collisions. The dynamic intracranial pressure response, characterised by large transients of both positive and negative pressure in the brain, was observed following short duration impacts in all three of the models used in this study. The dynamic intracranial response was also recorded following short duration impacts of high energy, involving large impact forces, which were deemed to be realistic representations of actual impact scenarios. With the aid of an approximate analytical solution, analysis of the simulations revealed that the dynamic response is caused by localised skull deflection, which induces flexural waves in the skull. The implications of these magnified pressures are discussed, with particular regard to the potential for intracranial cavitation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:586672 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Pearce, Christopher William |
| Contributors | Young, Philippe |
| Publisher | University of Exeter |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://hdl.handle.net/10871/14185 |
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