• Sebastien Roth, Jean-Sebastien Raul, and Remy Willinger.
• Université de Strasbourg, Institut de Mécanique des Fluides et des Solides, UDS CNRS, Strasbourg, France. sebastien.roth@utbm.fr
• Comput Methods Programs Biomed. 2010 Jul 1; 99 (1): 25-33.

AbstractBiomechanics of the human head has been widely studied for several decades. At a mechanical level, the use of engineering and finite element (FE) methods has allowed injury mechanisms to be investigated using biofidelic FE models. These models are generally validated using experimental data then used to simulate real-world head trauma in order to derive numerical tolerance limits, leading to efficient injury predicting tools. Due to ethical issues, experimental tests on the paediatric population remain prohibitive so direct validations of numerical models cannot be performed. However injury biomechanics on paediatric population is emerging with experimental tests on the paediatric cadavers or tests on biological tissue and the development of finite element models. The present paper proposes a new finite element model of a newborn head, simulating its main features, with material properties from the literature. Global validation of the model against experimental data in terms of skull deflection is performed and the model is used to simulate paediatric skull fracture coming from real-world head trauma.Copyright 2009 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

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