Material properties of the infant skull and application to numerical analysis of pediatric head injury

Thibault, Kirk L.; Kurtz, Steven M.; Runge, Christopher F.; Giddings, Virginia L.; Thibault, Lawrence E.

Affiliations

¹Exponent Failure Analysis Associates, Philadelphia, PA, USA

²School of Biomedical Engineering, Science, and Health Systems, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA

Abstract

The impact response of the infant head depends not only on its unique geometry, but also on the age-dependent mechanical properties of the skull and sutures. In the present study, human tissue samples containing cranial bone and sutures were taken from fresh surgical specimens and prepared as miniature specimens for mechanical testing. in bending and tension. The constitutive behavior for experimentally-determined infant skull and suture tissue was implemented in three-dimensional finite element models of the pediatric head to examine the sensitivity of skull and brain strains to variations in the impact direction. The head impact simulations demonstrated the directional dependence of skull fracture and traumatic brain injury risk.

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Cited By (2)

Year	Entry
2005	Wang Y, Rangarajan N, Shams T, Fukuda T, Yamada T, Jenny C. Design of a biofidelic instrumented 3.4 kg infant dummy. In: Proceedings of the 19th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). June 6-9, 2005; Washington, DC.
2004	Ivarsson BJ, Crandall JR, Longhitano D, Okamoto M. Lateral injury criteria for the 6-year-old pedestrian, I: criteria for the head, neck, thorax, abdomen and pelvis. In: Proceedings of the SAE World Congress & Exhibition. March 8-11, 2004; Detroit, MI. Warrendale, PA: Society of Automotive Engineers. SAE 2004-01-0323.