Effect of the Inhomogeneous Brain Mechanical Characteristic on Dynamic Responses of Head under Trauma
Paper in proceeding, 2014

Finite element (FE) brain models have been used as an effective tool for the investigation of traumatic brain injuries. The biofidelity of these models has been improved constantly in recent years. However,the inhomogeneous mechanical characteristic of brain tissue has to a large extent been neglected in FE brain modeling. The objective of this study was to determine the effect of such inhomogeneous characteristic on brain responses under traumatic mechanical loadings. Based on region‐specific experimental rat brain tissue responses, an inhomogeneous rat brain FE model was developed. Sagittal plane rotational impact tests were simulated and intracranial dynamic responses of the new inhomogeneous model were compared with those of a homogeneous model. The stress responses changed distinctly from the homogeneous model to the inhomogeneous model while dramatic and significant differences of the peak values were observed in the hippocampus, brainstem and cerebellum. The strain responses of these two rat brain models were similar while the significant difference of the peak values was only observed in the hippocampus with a small relative error. The study illustrated that the intracranial stress responses were more sensitive to such inhomogeneous characteristic than the intracranial strain responses when the head is subjected to rapid sagittal plane rotational acceleration trauma.

Traumatic brain injury

Inhomogeneous brain model

Animal experiment

Finite element modeling

Author

Lihai Ren

Daniel Baumgartner

Johan Davidsson

Chalmers, Applied Mechanics, Vehicle Safety

Jikuang Yang

Chalmers, Applied Mechanics, Vehicle Safety

Remy Willinger

Proceeding of the 2014 International IRCOBI Conference on the Biomechanics of Impact

Vol. IRC-14 19

Subject Categories

Mechanical Engineering

Areas of Advance

Transport

More information

Created

10/7/2017