The Finite Element Model Of The Human Neck And Validation

Neck injuries are among the most common injuries reported for automotive accidents. Their high incidence rate and often long-term consequences lead to significant social costs. A main research task of automobile industry is to improve automotive safety and reduce the accident costs. The objective of this research is to get a better understanding of neck injury mechanisms and study dynamic response of neck for occupants in frontal impact as well injury related parameters. For this purpose, a detailed head-neck complex FEM model was developed and validated in this study.The head-neck complex was modeled according to human anatomy structure. The model consists of head, vertebras, discs, facet joints, ligaments and muscles. The head was modeled using 1190 shell elements, the vertebras 12941 shell elements, the disks 566 solid elements, the facet joints 848 solid elements, the ligaments 205 spring elements, and the muscles 61 beam elements. Mechanical properties of the biological tissues were obtained from published data. The head and vertebras were defined as high stiffness material, the disks and the muscles as viscous-elastic material, and the ligaments and the facet joints as elastic material. The boundary and loading conditions were applied according to frontal impact test setup. The model was validated according to test data and the results are acceptable.A primary study of soft tissues' effect on the neck motion was carried out. The results show that the property of disks has great effect on the biomechanical response of the neck and the muscle has a contribution to the stability of neck motion.The global kinematics like head, translational and angular, movements and accelerations as well as local kinematics such as vertebral rotations and tissue loads can be predicted with this neck model. This model has a high biofidelity and will contribute to the research on neck injury mechanism and development of injury protective device.