Lower Limb Response to Anti-personnel Landmine Blast Explosions: Injury Assessment and Mitigation Strategies

Abstract

Injuries in lower extremities due to anti-personnel (AP) landmine blasts have been a major cause of amputation in soldiers. Therefore, it is crucial to understand the mechanism of these injuries for designing advanced personnel protective equipment and superior medical interventions. Various attempts have been made to correlate lower limb cadaveric mine blast test data using surrogate models, but till date, no study has been reported to validate it using numerical methods. In this work, a finite element computational framework was developed for landmine blasts using a biofidelic human body lower limb model for validating in situ tibia forces and injury patterns with PMHS (post mortem human subjects) test data. Based on the reliability of the validated numerical analysis model, efforts were made to elucidate landmine blast physics, blast wave intensity for various mine threats, pathophysiology of lower extremity trauma, and effectiveness of various blast mitigation strategies. Numerical simulations were performed to assess the level of protection offered by a standard army combat boot to the lower limb for an M-14 mine blast. Furthermore, for attenuating the load transmission to the lower limb, aluminum foam sandwich panel has been proposed as a potential shoe insert material due to its high-energy absorption capabilities. Compared to the bare foot scenario, aluminum foam shoe insert in double-core configuration was effective in minimizing severity of M-14 mine blast injuries by reducing the peak tibia force by 34% with a significant delay in time of arrival of the peak. Additionally, the proposed mine protective shoe concept offers 25.2% more reduction in peak tibia force compared to the standard military combat boot for a charge triggered by victim’s heel.