scholarly journals In silico investigation of biomechanical response of a human subjected to primary blast

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sunil Sutar ◽  
Shailesh Ganpule

The response of the brain to the explosion induced primary blast waves is actively sought. Over the past decade, reasonable progress has been made in the fundamental understanding of bTBI using head surrogates and animal models. Yet, the current understanding of how blast waves interact with the human is in nascent stages, primarily due to lack of data in humans. The biomechanical response in human is critically required so that connection to the aforementioned bTBI models can be faithfully established. Here, using a detailed, full-body human model, we elucidate the biomechanical cascade of the brain under a primary blast. The input to the model is incident overpressure as achieved by specifying charge mass and standoff distance through ConWep. The full-body model allows to holistically probe short- (<5 ms) and long-term (200 ms) brain biomechanical responses. The full-body model has been extensively validated against impact loading in the past. In this work, we validate the head model against blast loading. We also incorporate structural anisotropy of the brain white matter. Blast wave human interaction is modeled using a conventional weapon modeling approach. We demonstrate that the blast wave transmission, linear and rotational motion of the head are dominant pathways for the biomechanical loading of the brain, and these loading paradigms generate distinct biomechanical fields within the brain. Blast transmission and linear motion of the head govern the volumetric response, whereas the rotational motion of the head governs the deviatoric response. We also observe that blast induced head rotation alone produces a diffuse injury pattern in white matter fiber tracts. Lastly, we find that the biomechanical response under blast is comparable to the impact event. These insights will augment laboratory and clinical investigations of bTBI and help devise better blast mitigation strategies.

Author(s):  
Oruba Rabie ◽  
Yahia M. Al-Smadi

The collapse of significant structures caused by terrorist attacks in the past decades has motivated engineers to study the stability of current structural systems and their susceptibility to collapse. This collapse usually occurs due to blast waves generated by the high explosive bursts in the air that hit the structural components of the buildings leading to catastrophic damages which unfortunately happen before the evacuation. In an effort to find a safety criterion for buildings subjected to blasting; this study uses the nonlinear FEA explicit software LS-DYNA to highlight the effect of blast wave propagation on reinforced concrete column taking into account the standoff distance and charge weight variations. The effects of these two variables have been quantified through the comparison of resulted pressures, displacement and impulses.


Author(s):  
Siavash Hashemi ◽  
Ali M. Sadegh

The objectives of this study is to investigate the transduction of blast wave through the SAS region and the influence of SAS including different types of trabeculae in reducing the strain in the brain, when the head is subjected to a blast wave, and finally, comparing that to a none blast load such as blunt impacts or angular accelerations of the head during contact sports or accidents. This is accomplished through a series of Global/Local models of the head, neck and the brain. Specifically, a validated FE 3D model of the head and neck is subjected to a blast wave and the time dependent local compressive pressure gradient on the dura matter is calculated. Then through several detailed local FE models of the head, consisting Dura mater, Gray matter, Subarachnoid space having trabeculae and the CSF, the strains in the brain are calculated. In the local models different architecture and morphology of the trabeculae (rod shaped and the tree-shaped) are considered. The Global/Local models were analyzed using ABAQUS 6.12. In addition, the same procedure has been carried out for a velocity impact profile corresponding to 1.1 mph. The results revealed that the shape of the trabeculae would not affect the severity of loads transferring to the brain from shock waves in blast scenarios. Moreover, the interaction between the CSF and Tree-shaped trabeculae and rods with smaller cross sections, protect the brain better in impacts.


2013 ◽  
Vol 135 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Veera Selvan ◽  
Shailesh Ganpule ◽  
Nick Kleinschmit ◽  
Namas Chandra

Blast waves generated in the field explosions impinge on the head-brain complex and induce mechanical pressure pulses in the brain resulting in traumatic brain injury. Severity of the brain injury (mild to moderate to severe) is dependent upon the magnitude and duration of the pressure pulse, which in turn depends on the intensity and duration of the oncoming blast wave. A fluid-filled cylinder is idealized to represent the head-brain complex in its simplest form; the cylinder is experimentally subjected to an air blast of Friedlander type, and the temporal variations of cylinder surface pressures and strains and fluid pressures are measured. Based on these measured data and results from computational simulations, the mechanical loading pathways from the external blast to the pressure field in the fluid are identified; it is hypothesized that the net loading at a given material point in the fluid comprises direct transmissive loads and deflection-induced indirect loads. Parametric studies show that the acoustic impedance mismatches between the cylinder and the contained fluid as well as the flexural rigidity of the cylinder determine the shape/intensity of pressure pulses in the fluid.


2021 ◽  
pp. 204141962110333
Author(s):  
Amir Zaghloul ◽  
Alex Remennikov ◽  
Brian Uy

With the increase of terrorist attacks over the past decades, many engineering societies have started issuing design guides to calculate blast loads on structures. While such guides can be successfully used to assess blast loads due to single detonations, the effects of multiple detonations are often overlooked. In this research, the enhancement in blast parameters resulting from simultaneously detonating multiple charges is investigated, emphasising the interaction of blast waves with narrow targets. A parametric CFD study using the finite volume code Viper::Blast was performed where the number of charges, their arrangement, and the scaled stand-off distances were changed. It is found that, when detonated simultaneously, multiple charges return much higher pressure and impulse values compared to an equivalent single charge. Moreover, an arced arrangement of multiple charges is more efficient than a flat arrangement in enhancing blast wave parameters. Such enhancement is beneficial in scenarios involving demolition. Approximate methods to compute blast wave parameters from multiple simultaneously detonated spherical charges are presented in this study, where pressure and impulse from multiple charges can be computed by only knowing the parameters resulting from an equivalent single charge.


2021 ◽  
pp. bmjmilitary-2021-001796
Author(s):  
J W Denny ◽  
A S Dickinson ◽  
G S Langdon

‘Primary’ blast injuries (PBIs) are caused by direct blast wave interaction with the human body, particularly affecting air-containing organs. With continued experimental focus on PBI mechanisms, recently on blast traumatic brain injury, meaningful test outcomes rely on appropriate simulated conditions. Selected PBI predictive criteria (grouped into those affecting the auditory system, pulmonary injuries and brain trauma) are combined and plotted to provide rationale for generating clinically relevant loading conditions. Using blast engineering theory, explosion characteristics including blast wave parameters and fireball dimensions were calculated for a range of charge masses assuming hemispherical surface detonations and compared with PBI criteria. While many experimental loading conditions are achievable, this analysis demonstrated limits that should be observed to ensure loading is clinically relevant, realistic and practical. For PBI outcomes sensitive only to blast overpressure, blast scaled distance was demonstrated to be a useful parameter for guiding experimental design as it permits flexibility for different experimental set-ups. This analysis revealed that blast waves should correspond to blast scaled distances of 1.75<Z<6.0 to generate loading conditions found outside the fireball and of clinical relevance to a range of PBIs. Blast waves with positive phase durations (2–10 ms) are more practical to achieve through experimental approaches, while representing realistic threats such as improvised explosive devices (ie, 1–50 kg trinitrotoluene equivalent). These guidelines can be used by researchers to inform the design of appropriate blast loading conditions in PBI experimental investigations.


2015 ◽  
Vol 137 (12) ◽  
Author(s):  
Haojie Mao ◽  
Ginu Unnikrishnan ◽  
Vineet Rakesh ◽  
Jaques Reifman

Multiple injury-causing mechanisms, such as wave propagation, skull flexure, cavitation, and head acceleration, have been proposed to explain blast-induced traumatic brain injury (bTBI). An accurate, quantitative description of the individual contribution of each of these mechanisms may be necessary to develop preventive strategies against bTBI. However, to date, despite numerous experimental and computational studies of bTBI, this question remains elusive. In this study, using a two-dimensional (2D) rat head model, we quantified the contribution of head acceleration to the biomechanical response of brain tissues when exposed to blast waves in a shock tube. We compared brain pressure at the coup, middle, and contre-coup regions between a 2D rat head model capable of simulating all mechanisms (i.e., the all-effects model) and an acceleration-only model. From our simulations, we determined that head acceleration contributed 36–45% of the maximum brain pressure at the coup region, had a negligible effect on the pressure at the middle region, and was responsible for the low pressure at the contre-coup region. Our findings also demonstrate that the current practice of measuring rat brain pressures close to the center of the brain would record only two-thirds of the maximum pressure observed at the coup region. Therefore, to accurately capture the effects of acceleration in experiments, we recommend placing a pressure sensor near the coup region, especially when investigating the acceleration mechanism using different experimental setups.


Author(s):  
Amal Alzain ◽  
Suhaib Alameen ◽  
Rani Elmaki ◽  
Mohamed E. M. Gar-Elnabi

This study concern to characterize the brain tissues to ischemic stroke, gray matter, white matter and CSF using texture analysisto extract classification features from CT images. The First Order Statistic techniques included sevenfeatures. To find the gray level variation in CT images it complements the FOS features extracted from CT images withgray level in pixels and estimate the variation of thesubpatterns. analyzing the image with Interactive Data Language IDL software to measure the grey level of images. The results show that the Gray Level variation and   features give classification accuracy of ischemic stroke 97.6%, gray matter95.2%, white matter 97.3% and the CSF classification accuracy 98.0%. The overall classification accuracy of brain tissues 97.0%.These relationships are stored in a Texture Dictionary that can be later used to automatically annotate new CT images with the appropriate brain tissues names.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (9) ◽  
pp. 800-811 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ferath Kherif ◽  
Sandrine Muller

In the past decades, neuroscientists and clinicians have collected a considerable amount of data and drastically increased our knowledge about the mapping of language in the brain. The emerging picture from the accumulated knowledge is that there are complex and combinatorial relationships between language functions and anatomical brain regions. Understanding the underlying principles of this complex mapping is of paramount importance for the identification of the brain signature of language and Neuro-Clinical signatures that explain language impairments and predict language recovery after stroke. We review recent attempts to addresses this question of language-brain mapping. We introduce the different concepts of mapping (from diffeomorphic one-to-one mapping to many-to-many mapping). We build those different forms of mapping to derive a theoretical framework where the current principles of brain architectures including redundancy, degeneracy, pluri-potentiality and bow-tie network are described.


Author(s):  
Hugues Duffau

Investigating the neural and physiological basis of language is one of the most important challenges in neurosciences. Direct electrical stimulation (DES), usually performed in awake patients during surgery for cerebral lesions, is a reliable tool for detecting both cortical and subcortical (white matter and deep grey nuclei) regions crucial for cognitive functions, especially language. DES transiently interacts locally with a small cortical or axonal site, but also nonlocally, as the focal perturbation will disrupt the entire subnetwork sustaining a given function. Thus, in contrast to functional neuroimaging, DES represents a unique opportunity to identify with great accuracy and reproducibility, in vivo in humans, the structures that are actually indispensable to the function, by inducing a transient virtual lesion based on the inhibition of a subcircuit lasting a few seconds. Currently, this is the sole technique that is able to directly investigate the functional role of white matter tracts in humans. Thus, combining transient disturbances elicited by DES with the anatomical data provided by pre- and postoperative MRI enables to achieve reliable anatomo-functional correlations, supporting a network organization of the brain, and leading to the reappraisal of models of language representation. Finally, combining serial peri-operative functional neuroimaging and online intraoperative DES allows the study of mechanisms underlying neuroplasticity. This chapter critically reviews the basic principles of DES, its advantages and limitations, and what DES can reveal about the neural foundations of language, that is, the large-scale distribution of language areas in the brain, their connectivity, and their ability to reorganize.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document