An Analysis Of The Effects Of Neck Restraint On Craniocerebral Injury Of A Three-year-old Child

Finite element(FE)method has been regarded as a useful tool to study the biomechanics of child head injury.Research results from such study can provide important reference for the protection of child head from injury,especially in the processes of vehicle safety design.Because the factors leading to head injury can be multiple and very complex under foreseeable various circumstances,the natural restraint of the neck on the head responses will affect the biomechanics injury parameters to a large extent,thus affecting the accuracy of child head injury prediction.This study explores the effects of neck restraint on the responses of a three-year-old child head during impact,building up on the researches have been done on child head FE modeling and injury mechanisms decades ago at home and abroad.Using a finite element model of a three-year-old child head with and without the neck,when the two heads impact with each other,the neck restraint was found to have no effect on the responses of both brains.Therefore,the neck restraint did not play a role on a three-year-old child head injury under direct impact.However,The biomechanical responses of the heads with/without the neck are different when the two heads impact to a rigid plate.Impacts in the front and on the side with the same speed to the rigid plate,brain responses from the head were also different from that without the neck.In order to investigate the effect of the neck on the head/brain responses under rotational loads,the same angular velocity-time curve was applied to the head with and without neck constraint.It was found the neck restraint made no different in terms of brain responses.But when a torque was applied,the neck restraint greatly affected the brain responses when the head with and without the neck.By simulating the impact of the impact of the airbag on child head injury,it was found that the neck restraint affected head movement and biomechanical injury parameters with the same distance from the airbag.Therefore,when simulating the head injury of 3-year-old child,the influence of neck restraint on craniocerebral responses should be considered when predicting head injuries.