Mechanism and microstructure based concept to predict skull fracture using a hybrid-experimental-modeling-computational approach.

Abstract

Cellular and tissue-scale indent/impact thresholds for different mechanisms of functional impairments to the brain would be the preferred method to predict head injuries, but a comprehensive understanding of the dominant possible injury mechanisms under multiaxial stress-states and rates is currently not available. Until then, skull fracture could serve as an indication of head injury. Therefore the ability to predict the initiation of skull fracture through finite element simulation can serve as an in silico tool for assessing the effectiveness of various head protection scenarios. For this objective, skull fracture initiation was represented with a microstructurally-inspired, mechanism-based (MIMB) failure surface assuming three different dominant mechanisms of skull failure: each element, with deformation and failure properties selected based on its microstructure, was allowed to fail either in tension, compression, or shear, corresponding to clinical linear, depressed or penetrating shear-plug failure (fracture), respectively. Microstructure-inspired a priori values for the initiation threshold of each mechanism, obtained previously from uniaxial and simple-shear experiments, were iterated and optimized for the predicted load-displacement to represent that of the corresponding indentation experiment. Element-level failure enabled the visualization of the evolution of fracture by different mechanisms. The final crack pattern at the time of macroscopic (clinically-identifiable) injury was compared between the simulation and experiment obtained through 3D tomography. Even though the timing was slightly different, the simulated prediction represented remarkably well the experimental crack pattern before the appearance of the catastrophic unstable fast crack in the experiment, thus validating the implemented hybrid-experimental-modeling-computational (HEMC) concept as a tool to predict skull fracture initiation.