Citation

Zou H, Schmiedeler JP. Int. J. Crashworthiness 2008; 13(3): 337-348.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/13588260801943047

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Caused by strain deformation in brain tissue, diffuse axonal injury (DAI) is one of the most devastating types of traumatic brain injury; it frequently occurs in automobile crashes. Although offering detailed anatomical structures, finite-element human head models require complete knowledge of material properties of the head and need high computational capacity. Similar to a brain injury model developed in the sagittal plane in an earlier work, an analytical model in the coronal plane is developed for brain injury study. A measure of strain for DAI prediction is presented on the basis of the two planar models. With the maximum shear strain selected as the injury indicator of DAI, the strain measure was applied to frontal and side impact tests conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The results of the crash reconstructions from the planar models were compared with the injury predictions using the head injury criterion and the SIMon finite-element head model. It shows that the simple measure of strain has the capability to predict brain injuries from automobile crashes. The maximum shear strain from the planar models can be used as a critical element to predict DAI.