Citation

Notghi B, Bhardwaj R, Bailoor S, Thompson K, Weaver AA, Stitzel JD, Nguyen TV. J. Biomech. Eng. 2017; 139(8): e4037072.

Affiliation

Department of Mechanical Engineering Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, Maryland, 21218vicky.nguyen@jhu.edu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, American Society of Mechanical Engineers)

DOI

10.1115/1.4037072

PMID

28617927

Abstract

Ocular trauma is one of the most common types of combat injuries resulting from the exposure of military personnel with improvised explosive devices. The injury mechanism associated with the primary blast wave are poorly understood. We employed a three-dimensional computational model, which included the main internal ocular structures of the eye, spatially varying thickness of the cornea-scleral shell, and nonlinear tissue properties, to calculate the intraocular pressure and stress state of the eye-wall and internal ocular structure caused by blast. The intraocular pressure and stress magnitudes were applied to estimate the injury risk using existing models for blunt impact and blast loading. The simulation results demonstrated that blast loading can induce significant stresses in the different components of the eyes that correlate with observed primary blast injuries in animal studies. Different injury models produced widely different injury risk predictions, which highlights the need for experimental studies evaluating mechanical and functional damage to the ocular structures caused by blast loading.

Language: en