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Effectiveness of eye armor during blast loading

DSpace at IIT Bombay

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Title Effectiveness of eye armor during blast loading
 
Creator BAILOOR, S
BHARDWAJ, R
NGUYEN, TD
 
Subject MOUSE MODEL
INJURY
TRAUMA
ORBIT
Ocular trauma
Primary blast injuries (PBI)
Blast loading
Eye armor
Military Combat Eye Protection (MCEP)
Fluid-structure interaction
 
Description Ocular trauma is one of the most common types of combat injuries resulting from the interaction of military personnel with improvised explosive devices. Ocular blast injury mechanisms are complex, and trauma may occur through various injury mechanisms. However, primary blast injuries (PBI) are an important cause of ocular trauma that may go unnoticed and result in significant damage to internal ocular tissues and visual impairment. Further, the effectiveness of commonly employed eye armor, designed for ballistic and laser protection, in lessening the severity of adverse blast overpressures (BOP) is unknown. In this paper, we employed a three-dimensional (3D) fluid-structure interaction computational model for assessing effectiveness of the eye armor during blast loading on human eyes and validated results against free field blast measurements by Bentz and Grimm (2013). Numerical simulations show that the blast waves focused on the ocular region because of reflections from surrounding facial features and resulted in considerable increase in BOP. We evaluated the effectiveness of spectacles and goggles in mitigating the pressure loading using the computational model. Our results corroborate experimental measurements showing that the goggles were more effective than spectacles in mitigating BOP loading on the eye. Numerical results confirmed that the goggles significantly reduced blast wave penetration in the space between the armor and the eyes and provided larger clearance space for blast wave expansion after penetration than the spectacles. The spectacles as well as the goggles were more effective in reducing reflected BOP at higher charge mass because of the larger decrease in dynamic pressures after the impact. The goggles provided greater benefit of reducing the peak pressure than the spectacles for lower charge mass. However, the goggles resulted in moderate, sustained elevated pressure loading on the eye, that became 50-100 % larger than the pressure loading experienced by the unprotected eye after 0.2 ms of impact of blast wave, for lower as well as higher charge mass. The present model provides fundamental insights of flow and pressure fields in the ocular region, which helps to explain the effectiveness of the eye armor. Since the measurements of these fields are not trivial, the computational model aids in better understanding of development of PBI.
 
Publisher SPRINGER HEIDELBERG
 
Date 2016-01-14T11:07:52Z
2016-01-14T11:07:52Z
2015
 
Type Article
 
Identifier BIOMECHANICS AND MODELING IN MECHANOBIOLOGY, 14(6)1227-1237
1617-7959
1617-7940
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10237-015-0667-z
http://dspace.library.iitb.ac.in/jspui/handle/100/17436
 
Language en