Study of the Mechanism of Cerebral Contusion Based on the Real-World Brain Injury Accidents

Abstract

In this study, the mechanism of cerebral contusion was investigated using finite element analysis. A finite element human head model was constructed and used to simulate of 9 real-world fatal cerebral contusion accident cases. In these simulations, the impact velocities of the impact objects were estimated on the basis of the available information such as the regions of skull fracture and cerebral contusion. The pressure fluctuations inside the skull and the input force durations in each case were obtained using these simulations. These results show that in case of coup contusion, a negative pressure occurs on the impact side and is directly correlated with short force durations. In contrast, in case of contrecoup contusion, negative pressure occurs on the opposite side of impact and is directly correlated with long force durations. As the result, coup contusions are caused when the input force durations are short, contrecoup contusions are caused when the input force durations are long.

Keywords

• cerebral contusion
• fem
• human head model
• input force duration
• real-world brain injury accident cases