Tan Long Bin, Tse Kwong Ming, Tan Yuan Hong, Sapingi Mohamad Ali Bin, Tan Vincent Beng Chye, Lee Heow Pueh
Department of Mechanical Engineering, National University of Singapore, 21 Lower Kent Ridge Rd, 119077, Singapore.
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, 3010, Australia.
Int J Numer Method Biomed Eng. 2017 Dec;33(12). doi: 10.1002/cnm.2884. Epub 2017 May 31.
Blast-induced traumatic brain injury has been on the rise in recent years because of the increasing use of improvised explosive devices in conflict zones. Our study investigates the response of a helmeted human head subjected to a blast of 1 atm peak overpressure, for cases with and without a standard polycarbonate (PC) face shield and for face shields comprising of composite PC and aerogel materials and with lateral edge extension. The novel introduction of aerogel into the laminate face shield is explored and its wave-structure interaction mechanics and performance in blast mitigation is analysed. Our numerical results show that the face shield prevented direct exposure of the blast wave to the face and help delays the transmission of the blast to reduce the intracranial pressures (ICPs) at the parietal lobe. However, the blast wave can diffract and enter the midface region at the bottom and side edges of the face shield, resulting in traumatic brain injury. This suggests that the bottom and sides of the face shield are important regions to focus on to reduce wave ingress. The laminated PC/aerogel/PC face shield yielded higher peak positive and negative ICPs at the frontal lobe, than the original PC one. For the occipital and temporal brain regions, the laminated face shield performed better than the original. The composite face shield with extended edges reduced ICP at the temporal lobe but increases ICP significantly at the parietal lobe, which suggests that a greater coverage may not lead to better mitigating effects.
近年来，由于冲突地区简易爆炸装置的使用增加，爆炸所致创伤性脑损伤呈上升趋势。我们的研究调查了在1个标准大气压峰值超压爆炸作用下，佩戴头盔的人头的反应，包括有无标准聚碳酸酯（PC）面罩的情况，以及由复合PC和气凝胶材料制成且带有侧边延伸的面罩的情况。探讨了气凝胶在层压面罩中的创新性引入，并分析了其波 - 结构相互作用机制以及在减轻爆炸影响方面的性能。我们的数值结果表明，面罩可防止爆炸波直接作用于面部，并有助于延迟爆炸的传播，从而降低顶叶的颅内压（ICP）。然而，爆炸波可在面罩底部和侧边边缘处发生绕射并进入面部中部区域，导致创伤性脑损伤。这表明面罩的底部和侧边是减少波进入的重要关注区域。层压PC/气凝胶/PC面罩在前额叶产生的峰值正、负ICP比原始PC面罩更高。对于枕叶和颞叶脑区，层压面罩的表现优于原始面罩。带有延伸边缘的复合面罩降低了颞叶的ICP，但显著增加了顶叶的ICP，这表明更大的覆盖范围可能不会带来更好的减轻效果。
