Human exposure to blast waves without any fragment impacts can still result in primary blast-induced traumatic brain injury (bTBI). To investigate the mechanical response of human brain to primary blast waves and to identify the injury mechanisms of bTBI, a three-dimensional finite element head model consisting of the scalp, skull, cerebrospinal fluid, nasal cavity, and brain was developed from...

We have performed two sets of experiments looking at laser-driven radiating blast waves. In the first set of experiments the effect of a drive laser’s passage through a background gas on the hydrodynamical evolution of blast waves was examined. The laser’s passage heated a channel in the gas, creating a region where a portion of the blast wave front had an increased velocity, leading to the for...

The aerodynamics of the blast wave produced by laser ablation is studied using the piston analogy. The unsteady one-dimensional gasdynamic equations governing the flow are solved under assumption of self-similarity. The solutions are utilized to obtain analytical expressions for the velocity, density, pressure and temperature distributions. The results predict all the experimentally observed fe...

Blast wave overpressure has been associated with varying levels of traumatic brain injury in soldiers exposed to blast loading. In realistic blast loading scenarios, the mechanisms of primary blast injury are not well known due to the complex interactions of the blast wave with the human body, and the high acceleration experienced over very short time durations. The purpose of this study was to...

Exposure to a blast wave has been proposed to cause mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), with symptoms including altered cognition, memory, and behavior. This idea, however, remains controversial, and the mechanisms of blast-induced brain injury remain unknown. To begin to resolve these questions, we constructed a simple compressed air shock tube, placed rats inside the tube, and exposed them to...

The prevalence of blast induced traumatic brain injury in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan has motivated laboratory scale experiments on biomedical effects of blast waves and studies of blast wave transmission properties of various materials in hopes of improving armor design to mitigate these injuries. This paper describes the design and performance of a table-top shock tube that is more conv...

Blood‐brain barrier (BBB) is the mechanism that isolates the delicate environment of brain from circulating blood flow. The BBB dysfunction, present in almost all cases of traumatic brain injury (TBI), including blast‐induced TBI (bTBI), triggers a cascade of events leading to cognitive and behavioral impairments. However, it is still not known if the rupture of BBB in bTBI is due to the pressu...

Blast waves generated by improvised explosive devices can cause mild, moderate to severe traumatic brain injury in soldiers and civilians. To understand the interactions of blast waves on the head and brain and to identify the mechanisms of injury, compression-driven air shock tubes are extensively used in laboratory settings to simulate the field conditions. The overall goal of this effort is ...

Noise produced by blast waves can be a problem, especially when an explosion occurs near populated areas. As one means of reducing the blast noise, the explosive is detonated in a pit, a space closed at the bottom and sides, open at the top. A two-dimentional finite difference model was used to simulate such an explosion in a pit and to determine to what extent the blast wave was attenuated. Th...