Mechanical response of brain tissue under blast loading

In this study, a framework for understanding the propagation of stress waves in brain tissue under blast loading has been developed. It was shown that tissue nonlinearity and rate dependence are the key parameters in predicting the mechanical behavior under such loadings, as they determine whether traveling waves could become steeper and eventually evolve into shock discontinuities. To investigate this phenomenon, in the present study, brain tissue has been characterized as a quasi-linear viscoelastic (QLV) material and a nonlinear constitutive model has been developed for the tissue that spans from medium loading rates up to blast rates. It was shown that development of shock waves is possible inside the head in response to high rate compressive pressure waves. Finally, it was argued that injury to the nervous tissue at the microstructural level could be partly attributed to the high stress gradients with high rates generated at the shock front and this was proposed as a mechanism of injury in brain tissue.