Modeling Elderly Eye Injuries in Automobile Crashes

Eye injuries have been shown to be greater in the elderly population as a possible cause of this greater incidence. Three separate impact scenarios simulating a foam particle (30 m/s), a streering wheel (15 m/s), and an air bag (67 m/s), were applied to a finite element eye model in order to reveal the effects of aging on the eye when subjected to blunt trauma. The lens stiffness of the model was varied according to human lens stiffness values determined for each age group. The computational eye model demonstrated that increased risk was associated with the increasing stiffness of the lens, producing up to a 120% larger stress in the ciliary body.