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Lower Extremity Injury Criteria for Evaluating Military Vehicle Occupant Injury in Underbelly Blast Events
Technical Paper
2009-22-0009
Annotation ability available
Sector:
Language:
English
Abstract
Anti-vehicular (AV) landmines and improvised explosive devices
(IED) have accounted for more than half of the United States
military hostile casualties and wounded in Operation Iraqi Freedom
(OIF) (Department of Defense Personnel & Procurement
Statistics, 2009). The lower extremity is the predominantly injured
body region following an AV mine or IED blast accounting for 26
percent of all combat injuries in OIF (Owens et al., 2007).
Detonations occurring under the vehicle transmit high amplitude and
short duration axial loads onto the foot-ankle-tibia region of the
occupant causing injuries to the lower leg. The current effort was
initiated to develop lower extremity injury criteria for occupants
involved in underbelly blast impacts. Eighteen lower extremity post
mortem human specimens (PMHS) were instrumented with an implantable
load cell and strain gages and impacted at one of three
incrementally severe AV axial loading conditions. Twelve of the 18
PMHS specimens sustained fractures of the calcaneus, talus, fibula
and/or tibia. The initiation of skeletal injury was precisely
detected by strain gages and corresponded with local peak axial
tibia force. Survival analysis identified peak axial tibia force
and impactor velocity as the two best predictors of incapacitating
injury. A tibia axial force of 5,931 N and impactor velocity of
10.8 m/s corresponds with a 50 percent risk of an incapacitating
injury. The criteria may be utilized to predict the probability of
lower extremity incapacitating injury in underbelly blast
impacts.