Study on cumulative effects of biological craniocerebral trauma under repeated blast

Abstract

Repeated blast impacts on personnel in explosive environments can exacerbate craniocerebral trauma. Most existing studies focus on the injury effects of a single blast, lacking in-depth analysis on the injury effects and cumulative effects of repeated blasts. Therefore, rats were used as the experimental samples to suffer from explosion blasts with different peak air overpressures (167 kPa∼482 kPa) and varying number of repeated blasts. The cumulative effect of craniocerebral trauma was most pronounced for moderate repeated blast, showing approximately 95 % increase of trauma severity with penta blast, and an approximately 85 % increase of trauma severity with penta minor blast. The cumulative effect of craniocerebral trauma from severe, repeated blast has a smaller rate of change compared to the other two conditions. The severity of trauma from penta blast increased by approximately 69 % compared to a single blast. Comprehensive physiological, pathological and biochemical analysis show that the degree of neurological trauma caused by repeated blasts is higher than that of single blasts, and the pathological trauma to brain tissue is more extensive and severe. The trauma degree remains unchanged after double blast, increases by one grade after triple or quadruple blast, and increases by two grades after penta blast.