Date of Award

Spring 2008

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering

Program/Concentration

Mechanical Engineering

Committee Director

Sebastian Bawab

Committee Member

Gene Hou

Committee Member

Michael Woodhouse

Call Number for Print

Special Collections; LD4331.E56 J39 2008

Abstract

A parametric study of behavior of different brain material properties when exposed to a mid-high severity pulse is presented. Few studies have considered brain pressure as a parameter to study the effect of change of brain material properties. Specifically pressure and strain values in the frontal and posterior fossa and occipital region of the brain are investigated for mid-high severity pulse.

The brain model is composed of several parts modeled as hexahedral elements and with different material properties. A parametric study of several material types of brain is conducted using MAthematical DYnamic MOdel (MADYMO). Initially only the finite element (FE) brain models are exposed to Nahum's pulse [4].

Furthermore the FE head model is attached to the hybrid III 50thpercentile dummy to create a coupled FE head dummy (CFEHD). The CFEHD is positioned in a sled representing a NASCAR environment and is restrained by a five-point harness. The CFEHD dummy is calibrated and further validated by comparing the neck and head kinematics and kinetics to the Hybrid III 50th percentile dummy when exposed to several pulses.

The Head And Neck Support (HANS) system along with a helmet are accurately digitized using the FARO platinum arm [20, 28] and converted into a MADYMO file. To study the effect of the HANS system, a 45G frontal peak pulse is applied to the dummy without and with the HANS device system. Kinematics and kinetics results such as Head Injury Criteria (HIC), neck injury predictor (NIJ), angular velocity and acceleration are reported and compared. In addition, FE brain results such as pressure and strain at the coup and contrecoup region are analyzed for material types varying (rom isolinear to nonlinear viscoelastic.

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DOI

10.25777/waq8-xs83

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