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16th US National Congress of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics June 27 - July 2, 2010, State College, Pennsylvania, USA

USNCTAM2010-822

MRI-BASED FINITE ELEMENT MODELING OF HEAD TRAUMA: SPHERICALLY FOCUSING SHEAR WAVES
Ying Chen, Martin Ostoja-Starzewski Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering and Beckman Institute University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Urbana, IL 61801, USA martinos@illinois.edu large blood vessels in the subarachnoid space. While the skull and CSF are assumed to be linear elastic, the brain tissues are taken as linear viscoelastic in shear but elastic in bulk behavior (Table 1). Continuity of traction and displacement is assumed at material interfaces. In order to take into account the effect of neck on the head motion, we consider two extreme cases: free and fixed boundary conditions (BCs). In the first case the model is free to move without any displacement constraint on its base surface, while in the second case the displacement is fully constrained around the area of the foramen magnum. Since rotation about the occipital condyles is involved in actual head motion, motivated by variational principles of mechanics, we argue that the responses predicted by these two extreme cases provide bounds on the actual response. Our model is first validated on the intracranial pressure data of a frontal cadaveric impact experiment [3]. The impact force recorded in the experiment is directly applied to the model as a pressure input. The experimental pressure data are found to be well bounded by the responses computed from the models with free and fixed BCs [4]. From the simulation the maximum pressure in the brain is on the order of 10-100KPa and the maximum shear stress is on the order of 1KPa. Although the shear stress is 1-2 orders lower than the pressure, it is likely that it may cause damage because brain tissues have very small resistance to shear compared with its resistance to pressure [5]. Due to brain tissues high bulk and low shear moduli, the pressure wave speed is three orders of magnitude larger than that of shear waves. Therefore, the frontal impact gives rise not only to a fast pressure wave but also to a slow, and potentially more damaging, wave of distortion. Most interestingly, our simulation reveals a complex pattern of shear waves which converge spherically away from the skull towards the brain center. However, the shear waves do not increase in intensity as they converge inward. This can be explained from the standpoint of a competition of wave amplification due to spherically convergent implosion with wave damping due to

ABSTRACT The mechanisms underlying blunt head trauma are not fully understood. We developed a computational model to study the transient mechanics during head trauma events. Through frontal and side impact simulations, we discovered that the pressure input to the head gives rise not only to a fast pressure wave but also to a slow, and potentially more damaging, shear wave that converges spherically towards the brain center. A balance of wave amplification due to spherically convergent implosion with wave damping due to viscoelastic brain is observed, suggesting a stochastic competition of these two opposite effects. INTRODUCTION Blunt head trauma (BHT) is a brain injury without damage to skull. It occurs in traumatic events such as transportation accidents, falls, sports-related injuries, and explosions. While several brain injury mechanisms have been proposed, the controversies persist [1, 2]. Since understanding wave dynamics in a human brain is key to understanding brain damage in BHT, we have developed a powerful finite element (FE) head model allowing studies of head impact processes. SUMMARY OF RESEARCH Our FE head model is based on T1- and T2-weighted structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) dataset of a specific subject. Image voxels (1mm scale) are directly converted to eight-node hexahedral FEs. Individual FEs are assigned tissue types based on image segmentation results. The model includes four different tissue types skull, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), grey matter, and white matter all assumed homogeneous and isotropic. A mesh smoothing technique is then implemented to obtain smooth mesh surface and interfaces between different tissues to improve numerical accuracy. The CSF is modeled using solid FEs in order to take into account the shear resistance provided by the arachnoid trabeculae and

2010 USNCTAM

brain tissue viscoelasticity. Given the fact that each and every human brain is statistically variable, this competition has a paradigm in a model of wavefronts evolving (and possibly blowing up) in random, nonlinear elastic-dissipative media [6]. The spherically convergent shear wave pattern is also observed in a side impact (Fig. 1). The pressure and shear stress in this case are about one order of magnitude greater than those in frontal impact, suggesting that side impact to the head may cause more damage to the brain than the frontal impact. CONCLUSIONS The unique architecture of the human head, consisting of the hard solid skull, the membranes and CSF, and the viscoelastic brain core, leads to a partial conversion of the energy of pressure impact into a shear wave converging towards heads center. This finding may also contribute to the ongoing debate of the brain injury mechanism due to blast waves [2]. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Professors T. Paus (Nottingham University) and A. Ptito (Montreal Neurological Institute) suggested this research direction. It is also a pleasure to acknowledge Profs. B. Sutton and S. Broglio and Mr. M. Slavenas of the University of Illinois in connection with MRI methods. Support by the Mary Jane Neer Research Fund for Research in Disability, University of Illinois, is gratefully acknowledged. REFERENCES [1] Hardy, W.N., Khalil, J. W., and King, A.T. Literature review of Head Injury Biomechanics. International Journal of Impact Engineering, 15:561-586, 1994. [2] Bhattacharjee, Y. Shell Shock Revisited: Solving the Puzzle of Blast Trauma, Science, 319:556, 2008. [3] Nahum, A., Smith, R., and Ward, C. Intracranial Pressure Dynamics during Head Impact. Proceedings of 21st Stapp Car Crash Conference, 339-366, 1977. [4] Chen, Y., and Ostoja-Starzewski, M., MRI-based Finite Element Modeling of Head Trauma: Spherically Focusing Shear Waves. Acta Mechanica, 2010, DOI 10.1007/s00707-009-0274-0. [5] Holbourn, A.H.S. Mechanics of Head Injury. Lancet, 2: 438-441, 1943. [6] Ostoja-Starzewski, M. Microstructural Randomness and Scaling in Mechanics of Materials. CRC Press, 2008.

TABLE 1. MECHANICAL PROPERTIES DIFFERENT TISSUES USED IN THE FE MODEL Tissue Density

OF Decay factor

(kg/m3) Skull CSF Grey matter White matter 2070 1004 1040 1040

Bulk modulus K (Pa) 3.61E+9 2.19E+7 2.19E+9 2.19E+9

Long Short term term shear Shear modulus modulus G (Pa) G0 (Pa) 2.7E+9 5.0E+4 3.4E+4 4.1E+4 6.4E+3 7.8E+3

(sec-1) N/A N/A 400 400

FIG. 1. vON MISES STRESS (UNIT: PA) IN THE BRAIN (AXIAL VIEW) AT (A) 5ms, (B) 8ms, (C) 11ms, AND (D) 13ms DURING 15ms SIDE IMPACT SIMULATION.

2010 USNCTAM

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