Mechanical properties of brain tissue in strain rates of blast injury

Over the past decade there has been a significant increase in the number of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) cases among armed forces due to blast. Finite Element (FE) models of brain injury are essential to study brain injury mechanisms. The available FE models are based on the material properties that have been determined from experiments at strain rates below 100 s⁻¹. In this study a novel experimental model was developed to apply shear strains to brain samples with strain rates of 100, 500 and 800 s⁻¹ and the material properties were determined through FE optimization. The results showed that brain shear moduli at these strain rates are independent of strain rate and in agreement with previous results. The tissue failure stress at 100 s⁻¹ was significantly lower than the higher rates.