Skeletal Surrogate Metastructural Anisotropy Mimicry and the Influence of Fabrication Material

Human body models have been used for decades to inform efforts in promoting automobile occupant and pedestrian safety. However, many of these models fail to capture the intricacies of individual variability. Cadaveric subjects typically exceed representative age ranges and hence mechanics. Animal subjects typically require specific setups that stray from that which is representative of human crash scenarios. Computational models can only consider so many practical real-world variables. Artificial surrogates, dummies being popular among them, are very popular for reusability and robust data collection. However, even the biomechanically accurate skeletal surrogates available commercially are limited in that they do not consider human variability and skeletal microstructure local variability. The objective of the work herein is to assess computational methods of metastructural variability mimicry by fabrication material. We implement mimicry approaches focusing on bulk isotropic elasticity and in-house structural optimization approaches focusing on pure anisotropy skeletal microstructure mimicry. This allows us to assess rapid and detailed approaches alike and determine which fabrication materials are ideal under which approach. We found that Fortify DT was ideal for mimicking the phenomena present in the GHBMC M50 L5 model when using a walled Gyroid. For microstructural mimicry, we found there to be a range in acceptable bulk material elastic moduli between 2.98 and 36.6 GPa. Ultimately, these findings have the potential to guide practitioners of skeletal microstructure biomimicry.