Citation

King-Liu Y, von Rosenberg DU. Proc. IRCOBI 1973; 1: 285-300.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1973, International Research Council on Biomechanics of Injury)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This paper is part of our systematic effort to investigate the phenomena of traumatic head injury. It deals with a fluid-filled rigid container, moving with an initial velocity, striking a rigid wall through a spring and dashpot in parallel, so that an impulsive load is applied to the ensemble. This particular abstraction of the direct head impact phenomena appears to be ideal as a bridge between the simplistic one degree-of-freedom and the complex two- or three-dimensional continuum models of the same. An exact closed-form (wave propagation) small-time solution for the linear problem associated with the above model was obtained and reported else- where. Using the exact solution to the posed problem as a basis, a computer- aided finite-difference numerical solution was obtained for the system. The field descriptions of the fluid pressure and container acceleration depended on a small number of dimensionless parameters. These are : (1) The ratio of the velocity of the skull container (just prior to impact) to the wave speed in the cerebrospinal fluid and brain; (2) the brain to skull mass ratio; (3) the damping factor of the skull materials and (4) the brain to skull stiffness ratios. The head injury potential of a given impact is assessed as a function of the system response. Container acceleration is not a good index of the injury potential.