Skull Flexure from Blast Waves: A Mechanism for Brain Injury with Implications for Helmet Design

TL;DR

This paper reveals that blast waves can cause skull flexure leading to brain injury without impact, highlighting a new injury mechanism with implications for helmet design and military safety.

Contribution

It introduces a novel mechanism of blast-induced TBI through skull flexure, supported by numerical simulations, which was previously not well understood.

Findings

Non-lethal blasts induce skull flexure.

Skull flexure can generate damaging brain loads.

Implications for helmet design and injury diagnosis.

Abstract

Traumatic brain injury [TBI] has become a signature injury of current military conflicts, with debilitating, costly, and long-lasting effects. Although mechanisms by which head impacts cause TBI have been well-researched, the mechanisms by which blasts cause TBI are not understood. From numerical hydrodynamic simulations, we have discovered that non-lethal blasts can induce sufficient skull flexure to generate potentially damaging loads in the brain, even without a head impact. The possibility that this mechanism may contribute to TBI has implications for injury diagnosis and armor design.