IStructE Young Researchers Conference

Claire Villette Structures PhD student, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering won third prize at the IStructE Young Researchers Conference

Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) are commonly used weapons in current conflicts. When detonated under a military vehicle, the shock wave and energized soil particles induce a very high rate deformation of the floor, leading to severe injuries to the lower limbs of the vehicle occupants, including highly complex bone fractures. This type of blast-related injury is referred to as ‘solid blast’.

This PhD project aims to build a mesoscale predictive structural model of the skeletal system of the lower limb to investigate these fracture patterns, as well as assess and design protective equipment or subject-specific prosthetics. The methodology relies on the well-established observations that bone adapts its structure to loading conditions in a way that follows principal stress trajectories (Wolff, 1869). In this project, bone structure is predicted based on the assumption that the bone is optimally adapted to the loading conditions experienced during daily activities. Longer term applications will include 3D printing of bone surrogates for mechanical testing and tissue engineering scaffolds.