Imperial College London
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ProfessorDavidSharp

Faculty of Medicine, Department of Brain Sciences

Professor of Neurology
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 7991david.sharp Website

 
 
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Location

 

UREN.927Sir Michael Uren HubWhite City Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Yu:2020:10.1016/j.eml.2020.100739,
author = {Yu, X and Azor, A and Sharp, DJ and Mazdak, G},
doi = {10.1016/j.eml.2020.100739},
journal = {Extreme Mechanics Letters},
pages = {1--9},
title = {Mechanisms of tensile failure of cerebrospinal fluid in blast traumatic brain injury},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eml.2020.100739},
volume = {38},
year = {2020}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - Mechanisms of blast-induced Traumatic Brain Injury (BTBI), particularly those linked to the primary pressure wave, are still not fully understood. One possible BTBI mechanism is cavitation in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) caused by CSF tensile failure, which is likely to increase strain and strain rate in the brain tissue near the CSF. Blast loading of the head can generate rarefaction (expansion) waves and rapid head motion, which both can produce tensile forces in the CSF. However, it is not clear which of these mechanisms is more likely to cause CSF tensile failure. In this study, we used a high-fidelity 3-dimensional computational model of the human head to test whether the CSF tensile failure increases brain deformation near the brain/CSF boundary and to determine the key failure mechanisms. We exposed the head model to a frontal blast wave and predicted strain and strain rate distribution in the cortex. We found that CSF tensile failure significantly increased strain and strain rate in the cortex. We then studied whether the rapid head motion or the rarefaction wave causes strain and strain rate concentration in cortex. We isolated these two effects by conducting simulations with pure head motion loading (i.e. prescribing the skull velocity but eliminating the pressure wave) and pure blast wave loading (i.e. eliminating head motion by fixing the skull base). Our results showed that the strain increase in the cortex was mainly caused by head motion. In contrast, strain rate increase was caused by both rapid head motion and rarefaction waves, but head motion had a stronger effect on elevating strain rate. Our results show that rapid motion of the head produced by blast wave is the key mechanism for CSF tensile failure and subsequent concentration of strain and strain rate in cortex. This finding suggests that mitigation of rapid head motion caused by blast loading needs to be addressed in the design of protective equipment in order to prevent the tensile failure
AU  - Yu,X
AU  - Azor,A
AU  - Sharp,DJ
AU  - Mazdak,G
DO  - 10.1016/j.eml.2020.100739
EP  - 9
PY  - 2020///
SN  - 2352-4316
SP  - 1
TI  - Mechanisms of tensile failure of cerebrospinal fluid in blast traumatic brain injury
T2  - Extreme Mechanics Letters
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eml.2020.100739
UR  - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352431620300845?via%3Dihub
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/79423
VL  - 38
ER  -
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