Citation

Gerringer JW, Somasundaram K, Pintar FA. Accid. Anal. Prev. 2023; 190: e107157.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.aap.2023.107157

PMID

37336050

Abstract

Cervical spine (c-spine) injuries are a common injury during automobile crashes. The objective of this study is to verify an existing head-neck (HN) finite element model with military volunteer frontal impact kinematics by varying the muscle activation scheme from previous literature. Proper muscle activation will allow for accurate percent elongation (strain) of the c-spine ligaments and will serve to establish ligamentous response during non-injury frontal impacts. Previous human research volunteer (HRV) frontal impact sled tests reported kinematic data that served as the input for HN model simulation. Peak sled acceleration (PSA) was varied between 10G and 30G for HRVs. Muscle activation was shifted to begin at 0 ms at start of impact to allow for proper muscle contraction in the HN model. Then, extensor muscle activation magnitude was varied between 20 and 100% to determine the proper activation necessary to match kinematic outputs from the model with experimental results. The model was validated against 10G test recorded response. Ligament strain was measured from multiple ligaments along the c-spine once the model was verified. The 40% activated extensor muscle scheme was deemed the most biofidelic, with CORA scores of 0.743 and 0.686 for head X linear acceleration and angular Y acceleration for 10G pulse. All PSA groups scored well with this muscle activation. Most ligaments were buffered well by the active simulation, with only the interspinous ligament nearing physiologic injury. With the HN model verified against additional kinematic data, simulations with higher accelerations to predict areas of injury in real life crash scenarios are possible.

Language: en

Keywords

GHBMC head-neck; Human voluntary tests; Ligament strains; Non-injury runs