Document Type

Thesis

Date of Award

Summer 2019

Degree Name

Master of Science in Biomedical Engineering - (M.S.)

Department

Biomedical Engineering

First Advisor

Bryan J. Pfister

Second Advisor

N. Chandra

Third Advisor

Saikat Pal

Abstract

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) research is used to study the effects of brain injuries and the rehabilitations for them. TBI contributes to major cause of disability and deaths quantifying up to 30% of all the head injuries. To mimic real world impact to understand the mechanism of injury head-surrogate models are used. This thesis describes a method to record head kinematics from acceleration and angular rate sensors of head-brain surrogate model for blast and blunt injury. This methodology is validated through experimental testing. To get a better insight of the head kinematics experienced by a real skull a drop tower is used to delivered controlled impacts to the head model. The loading conditions include velocities at 1.3, and 1.5 m/s, impact locations at the crown and the forehead of the skull and with the brain composition being a 20% ballistics gelatin. The output head kinematics were then combined with brain deformation data and linked to head injury criteria. The strain, accelerometer and angular rate measurements were done using NI cDAQ-9188 Data Acquisition System combined with LabVIEW. Then, the data was analyzed in MATLAB.

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.