The objective of this study was to determine a relationship between shear stress and strain for human brain tissue by performing transient, single-pulse, high-rate, shear displacement tests. A constant velocity, parallel plate shear test device was designed and fabricated. This equipment generated constant rate shear strains in cylindrical tissue samples mounted between the shear plates. The transverse reaction force at the upper end of the sample was measured during the event with a sensitive quartz piezoelectric force transducer, thus obtaining the force associated with the displacement versus time ramp. Shear tests were performed on 125 tissue samples taken from twelve fresh cadaver brain specimens. The average true shear stress and finite strain were calculated. A nonlinear, viscoelastic, standard solid model was fit to the constant rate test data and the material constants were determined.

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Traumatic injury is a major cause of death in the child population. Motor vehicle crashes account for a large portion of these deaths, and a considerable effort is put forth by the safety community to identify injury mechanisms and methods of injury prevention. However, construction of biofidelic anthropomorphic test devices and computational models for this purpose requires knowledge of bone properties that is difficult to obtain. The objective of this study is to characterize the relationship between mechanical properties and measures of skeletal development in the growing rib. Anterolateral segments of 44 ribs from 12 pediatric individuals (age range: 5 months to 9 years) were experimentally tested in three-point bending. Univariate mixed models were used to assess the predictive abilities of development-related variables (e.g., age, stature, histomorphometry, cross-sectional geometry) on mechanical variables (material and structural properties). Results show that stature, in addition to age, may be a reliable predictor of bone strength, and that histomorphometry has potential to explain bone properties and to further our understanding of fracture mechanisms. For example, percent secondary lamellar bone (%Sd.Ar) successfully predicts peak force (F P) and Young's modulus (E). Application of these findings is not restricted to injury biomechanics, but can also be referenced in forensic and anthropological contexts.

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