Abstract
It has been hypothesised that short duration negative pressure pulses in the brain, caused by blunt impacts, can reach sufficient magnitude to cause cavitation in blood vessels and could explain the appearance of contusions, observed in many cases, at the pole opposite to impact (contre-coup injury). A finite element model (FEM) of pressure wave propagation in the brain was developed in order to numerically explore the peak pressures arising from an applied force time history. The sensitivity of the pressure response in the brain to changes in material and geometrical properties of the skull and brain as well as to changes in the applied force time history was extensively explored using the model. (A)