Development And Validation Of Six-year-old Children Head FE Model

Head injuries are often sustained in traffic accidents and head traumas are mostlikely to result in severe injury and death. Therefore, it is vital to conduct researchabout types of head injuries, injury mechanisms, injury tolerance, and protectivemeasures. Children suffer a greater risk of head injury compared to adults. Also, theanatomical structures of child head are quite different from those of adult head. Thelatest study indicates that child head can cause more severe injury than adult in thesame conditions. However, the damage criterions for child head are based on the dataof adult PMHST (Past Mortal Human Subject Test), and child FE head models are stillvery limited in the literature. As a result, to build accurate child head models and tocommence on the child head injury biomechanics research is of great theoreticalsignificance and engineering significance.In this study, ANSYS ICEM CFD/HEXA and Hypermesh software were appliedto develop a high quality detailed child head FE model according to a six-year-oldchild head tissue organic texture. The major anatomical structures of FE head modelinclude cerebrum, cerebellum, brainstem, corpus callosum, falx, tentorium, combinedpia-arachnoid complex with cerebro-spinal fluid (CSF), dura, skull and scalp. This FEhead model is one in the series. The series of children include the age of three, six andten. The series of these FE models have similar characteristics, material properties andboundary conditions for further comparative study.This six-year-old child head model has been validated against accident cases andpublished test data in Nahum’s literature. The skull stress and pressure in brain wereobtained in simulation. They were used to evaluate possible injury to the head. Theresults show that this model can predict head injury well and have good biofidelity.Due to the lack of experimental data, this paper manufactured an experimentalapparatus and the experimental program in order to obtain sufficient experimental datafor the head of children.