Development of Blast-Induced Traumatic Brain Injury Threshold in Rat and Pig and a Scaling Law from Animal to Human

Computational models of rat and pig heads will be developed and validated against pressure data available from previously conducted shock tube experiments by simulating complex blast interaction in a verified and validated shock tube numerical model. Finite Element and Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian techniques will be utilized. Available injury data will be examined in regions of interest generated though model predictions; associated Traumatic Brain Injury mechanism and threshold will be determined for each species. A Design of Computer Experiments will be performed to elucidate a transfer function to link the dissimilar anatomy of small and large animal species for establishing a scaling law. Investigation into the applicability of the proposed transfer function and scaling law from animal to human will be performed using a previously developed human head model. Comparison with real-world blast injury cases and statistical analysis will be used to judge the efficacy of the scaling method to ensure that the results are reasonable in the absence of direct validation data. Results from the human modeling will yield recommendations on the focus of further research and guide future experimental designs to improve the scaling law so that it can be used for developing injury mitigation strategies.