Arm Injury Prediction with THUMS SAFER: Improvements of the THUMS SAFER upper extremity

Sammanfattning: Globally, approximately 1.2 million people die each year due to traffic accidents. Upper extremity injuries account for 18% to 25% of all car accident injuries. In order to be able to analyze these crash-related injuries, Human body models(HBMs) are used as a complement to FE simulations. An example of a HBM is the THUMS SAFER that is based on a 50 percentile American male. The aim of this study was to improve the upper extremity of the THUMS SAFER with respect to Autoliv's requirements to better predict fractures. In addition, this was validated against the Forman experiment(Forman, et al., The journal of trauma and acute care surgery, vol. 77, 2014) where human cadavers of the upper extremity were axially impacted to replicate a car collision. This was done by generating the upper extremity geometry with segmentation of medical images of a right human hand in combination with the complete STL-geometry of the forearm from the Piper project. The STL-geometry of the segmented human hand and Piper forearm was integrated and a complete STL-geometry of the upper extremity was obtained. Based on the complete STL-geometry, the FE-arm HEX 4.0 was built with modelling of bones, ligaments, soft tissue and skin with corresponding material choice in accordance with Autoliv's requirements. The model HEX 4.0 was improved considering an increased mesh density from an average of 94% to 98%. HEX 4.0 was also validated against the data from the Forman experiment for experiments 5, 6 and 15. It showed a good correlation with the acceleration curves between the simulated and experimental values for the three experiments. The reaction force in the elbow was compared for experiment 15, where the simulated value 5.7 kN divided by a factor of 1.4 from 4 kN for the experiment. Furthermore, the fi rst principal strains that occurred in HEX 4.0 were analysed by 17 ms were the highest acceleration was achieved for experiments 5 and 6. Both experiments were shown to be close to the failure threshold of bones. However, the highest value e5=9.8E-03 occurred in the radius for experiment 5, while e6=9.3E-03 in a ligament for experiment 6. In addition, the failure threshold for experiment 15 exceeded 5 ms in lunate, schapoid and triquetrum. This indication of fractures is in good agreement with the experimental results where the corresponding bones resulted in fractures in experiment 15. HEX 4.0 was an improved upper extremity of the THUMS SAFER considering an increased mesh density. It is also capable of indicating fractures and corresponding positions in the form of analyzes of occurring stresses and strains. Nevertheless, improvements and further validation of HEX 4.0 has been proposed in the future work section.