A Review of Head Injury and Finite Element Head Models

Head injury, being one of the main causes of death or permanent disability in everyday life, continues to remain as a major health problem with significant socioeconomic costs. Therefore, there is a need for biomechanical studies of head injury, its mechanisms and its tolerance to external loading. Throughout the decades, finite element head models (FEHMs) have been used to assess the biomechanics of head injury mechanism. Given the fact that some of the internal biomechanical responses of the brain can neither be measured easily nor in-vivo by experimental techniques, FEHM offers a cost-effective alternative to experimental method in estimating the internal biomechanical responses of human head. This review paper aims to provide researchers in this field with some background information about head injury. A thorough literature review has been done to summarize the essential details in terms of modeling, material properties and boundary conditions of various FEHMs. The outline of this review is divided into two main sections. The first section consists of definitions, epidemiology, mechanism and classifications of head injury as well as some basic anatomy of human head. Beginning with the history of FEHMs and their revolution in geometry and complexity, the second section would be focusing on the various mechanical aspects of the FEHMs. Various boundary conditions and validations used by the FEHMs are also included in the review article. In addition, important findings and head injury criteria from these FEHMs are summarized.