Prediction of Mechanisms and Patterns of Human Spine Injuries to High-Velocity Impact Using Numerical Modeling

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Spinal traumas are particularly disabling, their cost is very important for the society nowadays. The spinal injuries can today occur during transportation, domestic, sport or professional activities. Since the experimental investigations of the spinal injuries remain laborious tasks involving important cost and biological samples, the Finite Element (FE) Modeling represents a powerful tool to understand the spinal load-sharing changes and to identify the different injury mechanisms. Moreover, the anatomy of the dummies used in the transportation safety regulations is very simplified and cannot represent accurately the bio-realistic behavior of the human body. Although these dummies permit verifying the global behavior of the body, they are unable to demonstrate properly the synergy between the different body structures under impact conditions. The proposed research consists to create refined and anatomically realistic 3D FE models of the human cervical and thoracosacral spines that include the passive (bony structures, intervertebral discs, and ligaments) and active (muscles) components to investigate the load-sharing and injury mechanisms under high-energy and simple fall as well as frontal, lateral, and rear-impact scenarios caused by Motor Vehicle Accidents. The long-term objective is to combine the cervical and thoracosacral spines together to investigate the sports-related injuries that occur more often at the cervico-thoracic and thoraco-lumbar junctions of the spine. In particular, the aim is to determine which spinal structure is at risk of injury and at what loading rate and direction this injury may occur. The spine models will enrich spinal injury biomechanics research, which is less developed in Canada. Accurate determination of load partitioning among passive and active components of the spine under impact loads is of prime importance in the improvement of vehicle safety features and current regulatory injury criteria, and in the effective prevention, evaluation and treatment of spinal injuries. Studying different injury mechanisms resulting from falling, sports and professional activities and understanding the mechanisms behind these injuries is critical for protecting the spine and development of equipment for impact sports.