A study on affections of Different Skull-brain Interface Modeling Approaches on Intracranial Responses in Finite Element Analysis

The mechanical behaviors of brain-skull interface are rather complex and difficult to understand, and various simplified connecting or contacting methods are usually used to simulate the interactions between the brain and skull in the current head finite element (FE) models. Considering the modeling approach of the brain-skull interface determines how loads are transmitted from skull to brain and affects on the intracranial brain responses, therefore, it is essential to study the affections of different brain-skull interface modeling approaches on intracranial brain responses and obtain an accurate load transmission mechanism to study brain injuries. In this study, the head FE model which is a part of the Advanced Chinese Human Body Models (AC-HUMs) is used and some modifications were made on the modeling method of the brain-skull interface in this head FE model. First, head FE model with several different brain-skull interface modeling methods including tied contact, shared nodes, tiebreak contact and the ALE (Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian) method were established. Then these head FE models were used to study the intracranial brain responses under the typical head experimental loading conditions including including Nahum's brain pressure experiment and Hardy & Kleiven's experiments on brain motion. Finally, the results from each head FE model were compared to identify trends and analyze the affections on both brain displacement and pressure.