Development of a Multi-Scale Finite Element Analysis Code by Using a Micro Nerve Cell Model for Brain Injury Prediction

Abstract

When the human head is loaded by the translational acceleration in the traffic crash accident, the human brain is damaged at the crash side and the counter side, such as the coup and the contre-coup brain injuries. The purpose of this study is to reveal a generation mechanism of the coup and contrecoup brain injuries and develop a prediction method of the brain injury at the nerve cell level by using the dynamic-explicit finite element method (FEM). We carried out a multi-scale crash simulation by using a macroscopic head model and a microscopic nerve cell model. We have investigated the hydrostatic pressure, the equivalent stress and strains distributions in the nerve cell during the head crash against the street plate. Numerical results show the availability of our multi-scale analysis to predict the brain injury at the macro and micro levels.