Shock Tube Design and the Kinematics of the Hybrid III Dummy Head under Shock Waves of Blast

Abstract

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is one of the most common injuries to soldiers in warfare today. A TBI occurs when the human brain is damaged by a sudden force coming from the environment. In the combat field of combat, high pressure blasts generated by improvised explosive devices (IEDs) are a constant threat and because of the sudden force of the blast wave are a major cause of the TBIs. Blasts created by IEDs can also cause damage to other human body parts including lungs, bowels, and any other air-containing organs. In this study, a blast shock tube was constructed for use with a Hybrid III dummy head model along with pressure sensors and accelerometers to obtain mechanical behavior data from when the generated compressed air is released from the driver section of the blast shock tube. As linear acceleration is one of the major factors in TBIs occurring, the main objective of this study was to determine the linear acceleration of the Hybrid III dummy head when hit by the pressure pulse generated by the blast shock tube. To generate the pressure pulse for mimicking the blasting scenario, a blast shock tube was constructed, with which the linear acceleration of the Hybrid III head could be found. The relationships between the pressure pulse. The acceleration and the standoff distance could then be determined. The velocity of the dummy head was identified using a high-speed camera and a simple model was established for finite element (FE) analysis. The computational results showed that the closer the dummy head was to the shock tube opening, and the higher the pressure pulse being used, the higher the maximum velocity and acceleration of the dummy head and the higher pressure experienced on the dummy head.