An adaptive-remeshing framework to predict impact-induced skull fracture in infants
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ORIGINAL PAPER
An adaptive‑remeshing framework to predict impact‑induced skull fracture in infants Junyan He1 · Jiawei Yan1 · Susan Margulies2 · Brittany Coats1 · Ashley D. Spear1 Received: 24 September 2019 / Accepted: 14 January 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Infant skull fractures are common in both accidental and abusive head trauma, but identifying the cause of injury may be challenging without adequate evidence. To better understand the mechanics of infant skull fracture and identify environmental variables that lead to certain skull fracture patterns, we developed an innovative computational framework that utilizes linear elastic fracture mechanics theory to predict skull fracture as a first step to study this problem. The finite element method and adaptive-remeshing technique were employed to simulate high-fidelity, geometrically explicit crack propagation in an infant skull following impact. In the framework, three modes of stress intensity factors are calculated by means of the M-integral using the commercial analysis code, FRANC3D, and are used as measures of crack driving force. The anisotropy of infant skulls is represented by means of a transversely isotropic constitutive model and a direction-dependent fracture-toughness locus. The ability of the framework to predict impact-induced fracture patterns is validated by comparison with experimentally observed fracture patterns from the literature. Keywords Computational fracture mechanics · Infant skull fracture · Crack growth · Linear elastic fracture mechanics
1 Introduction In 2017, approximately 3.5 million children in the USA were victims of child maltreatment and abuse (USDHHS 2019). Under current Department of Justice guidelines, an important indicator of physical abuse is the inability of the caretaker to provide a history that corresponds to the observed injuries of the child (Farley et al. 2002). When no history of trauma is presented, identifying discrepancies to injuries may be straightforward. However, when a history of a fall is provided, distinguishing between abusive and accidental trauma proves to be challenging, especially if the injuries are limited to skull fracture and underlying head trauma. Skull fractures are common in both accidental and abusive head trauma (Leventhal et al. 1993), but very little is known about the mechanics of skull fractures from accidental falls in infants. The ability to objectively identify the cause of * Ashley D. Spear [email protected] 1
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA
2
skull fracture and understand the sensitivity of skull fracture patterns to impact conditions (i.e., direction, height, surface conditions) can substantially improve the accurate detection of child abuse. Previous experimental research efforts have focused on exploring the impact response of the infant head and the conne
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