Citation

Roth S, Raul JS, Willinger R. Comput. Methods Programs Biomed. 2010; 99(1): 25-33.

Affiliation

Universite de Strasbourg, Institut de Mecanique des Fluides et des Solides, UDS CNRS, 2 rue Boussingault, 67000 Strasbourg, France.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.cmpb.2009.10.004

PMID

19923034

Abstract

Biomechanics of the human head has been widely studied for several decades. At a mechanical level, the use of engineering and finite element (FE) methods has allowed injury mechanisms to be investigated using biofidelic FE models. These models are generally validated using experimental data then used to simulate real-world head trauma in order to derive numerical tolerance limits, leading to efficient injury predicting tools. Due to ethical issues, experimental tests on the paediatric population remain prohibitive so direct validations of numerical models cannot be performed. However injury biomechanics on paediatric population is emerging with experimental tests on the paediatric cadavers or tests on biological tissue and the development of finite element models. The present paper proposes a new finite element model of a newborn head, simulating its main features, with material properties from the literature. Global validation of the model against experimental data in terms of skull deflection is performed and the model is used to simulate paediatric skull fracture coming from real-world head trauma.

Language: en