Comparison of mechanical response of head structure with different brain material models under impact

Abstract

Brian material models and mechanical properties are very important for pressure evolution experiments and numerical simulations in head structure under impact. A simplified head structure with core-shell finite element model was established, and the motion, skull stress, skull deformation, and brain stress were numerically simulated with different soft tissue material models. The equivalence of the material model in stress propagation simulation was discussed. In the present work, it showed that when the head with impact velocity of 1m/s, the head structure rebound with a velocity of 0.6 m/s ∼ 0.8m/s, and occurred between 600μs and 1000μs due to different material models, at this time, the stress wave oscillation propagated in the skull underwent 3-5 repeated loads. The positive pressure on the impact side of brain tissue could reach 400kPa ∼ 800kPa, the negative pressure on the opposite side was between −150 kPa to −385kPa, the skull strain was between −1.8 ‰ to −3.7 ‰, and the skull stress was between 25.3MPa ∼ 41.2MPa. In a larger range of impact velocities, material models with strain rate effect have more advantages in stress wave transmission and pressure changing within the core-shell structure. The strain rate effect characterized only by creep and relaxation has limited effects on impact simulation, and directly introducing different strain rate mechanical property interpolation for hyperelastic model simulation is more effective.