The mechanisms of early onset C5/C6 soft-tissue neck injury in rear impacts

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Gibson, Tom¹; Bostrom, Ola²; Kullgren, Anders³; Milthorpe, Bruce⁴

The mechanisms of early onset C5/C6 soft-tissue neck injury in rear impacts

Proceedings of the 2005 International IRCOBI Conference on the Biomechanics of Impact

Affiliations

¹Human Impact Engineering, Australia

²Autoliv Research, Sweden

³Folksam Research, Sweden

⁴Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering, UNSW, Australia
Abstract and keywords

An anatomically based, multi-body model of the C5/C6 motion segment was developed to study soft-tissue neck injury mechanisms in rear impacts. This was integrated into the MADYMO-based van der Horst head and neck model. Responses were compared with volunteer test data up to head restraint impact.

Soft-tissue loading was predicted for a series of rear-end vehicle crashes with crash recorders (n=78) and known long-term pain outcomes. Facet capsule shear and impingement injury mechanisms at C5/C6 were demonstrated. Facet capsule loading correlated well with NICmax and was able to predict the risk of AIS1 neck injuries with persisting pain.

Keywords: Whiplash; rear impact; soft tissue; neck; injury; models

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Cited By (1)

Year	Entry
2006	Ono K, Ejima S, Suzuki Y, Kaneoka K, Fukushima M, Ujihashi S. Prediction of neck injury risk based on the analysis of localized cervical vertebral motion of human volunteers during low-speed rear impacts. In: Proceedings of the 2006 International IRCOBI Conference on the Biomechanics of Impact. September 20-22, 2006; Madrid, Spain.103-113.