Mechanisms of Head Injury During High-Rate Blast and Blunt Impact Events

Blasts and blunt impacts are clearly large-scale phenomena, yet traumatic brain injury (TBI) occurs at a cellular or sub-cellular level. A number of hypotheses have been offered as the root causes of TBI including mechanical insults due to reverberations inside the skull following the primary blast wave, secondary and tertiary blast injury due to impact from projectiles and individuals thrown by the blast wave, vascular pressure resulting from a blast wave to the body extremities and electromagnetic radiation [1,2]. There is anecdotal information that supports, as well as contradicts, each of these hypotheses. In this work, a simulation-based framework is developed to help elucidate the mechanisms of traumatic brain injury.