Citation

Moss WC, King MJ, Blackman EG. Phys. Rev. Lett. 2009; 103(10): 108702.

Affiliation

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California 94551, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, American Physical Society)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

19792349

Abstract

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) has become a signature injury of current military conflicts, with debilitating, costly, and long-lasting effects. Although mechanisms by which head impacts cause TBI have been well researched, the mechanisms by which blasts cause TBI are not understood. From numerical hydrodynamic simulations, we have discovered that nonlethal blasts can induce sufficient skull flexure to generate potentially damaging loads in the brain, even without a head impact. The possibility that this mechanism may contribute to TBI has implications for injury diagnosis and armor design.

Language: en