TimmyHModelling Brain Blasts
December 2nd 2008 04:39
A computer simulation reveals how blast waves reverberate around a soldier's helmet.
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is often called the signature injury of the war in Iraq. Medical experts have yet to determine exactly what causes the condition, but the violent waves of air pressure emitted by an improvised explosive device (IED) or a rocket-propelled grenade are most likely to blame. These pressure waves travel close to the speed of sound and can rattle the brain's soft tissue, causing permanent, yet invisible, damage. In an effort to better understand how the waves shake soldiers' brains, researchers at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), in Washington, DC, developed a computer simulation that models the motion of a propagating blast wave using data gathered from laboratory experiments with sensor-studded mannequins.
"The simulation gives us the full 3-D flow field, velocities, and pressure distributions surrounding the head and the helmet," says David Mott, a scientist researching computational physics and fluid dynamics at NRL, and the project leader for the model. "We can actually watch the waves traveling and interacting."
Initial testing has already revealed some compelling results. "We are seeing the focusing of the pressure waves up under the helmet, so that the highest pressure is between the head and helmet, and not on the side facing the origin of the blast," says Mott. The researchers will present their work today at the 61st Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society's Division of Fluid Dynamics, in San Antonio, TX.
Really Long Link
By Brittany Sauser
Modelling Brain Blasts
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is often called the signature injury of the war in Iraq. Medical experts have yet to determine exactly what causes the condition, but the violent waves of air pressure emitted by an improvised explosive device (IED) or a rocket-propelled grenade are most likely to blame. These pressure waves travel close to the speed of sound and can rattle the brain's soft tissue, causing permanent, yet invisible, damage. In an effort to better understand how the waves shake soldiers' brains, researchers at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), in Washington, DC, developed a computer simulation that models the motion of a propagating blast wave using data gathered from laboratory experiments with sensor-studded mannequins.
"The simulation gives us the full 3-D flow field, velocities, and pressure distributions surrounding the head and the helmet," says David Mott, a scientist researching computational physics and fluid dynamics at NRL, and the project leader for the model. "We can actually watch the waves traveling and interacting."
Initial testing has already revealed some compelling results. "We are seeing the focusing of the pressure waves up under the helmet, so that the highest pressure is between the head and helmet, and not on the side facing the origin of the blast," says Mott. The researchers will present their work today at the 61st Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society's Division of Fluid Dynamics, in San Antonio, TX.
Really Long Link
By Brittany Sauser
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