Ludovic Noels

Computational biology - modeling of primary blast effects on the central nervous system.

OBJECTIVES Recent military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have highlighted the wartime effect of traumatic brain injury (TBI). The reason for the prominence of TBI in these particular conflicts as opposed to others is unclear but may result from the increased survivability of blast due to improvements in body armor. In the military context blunt, ballistic and blast effects may all contribute to CNS injury, however blast in particular, has been suggested as a primary cause of military TBI. While blast effects on some biological tissues, such as the lung, are documented in terms of injury thresholds, this is not the case for the CNS. We hypothesized that using bio-fidelic models, allowing for fluid-solid interaction and basic material properties available in the literature, a blast wave would interact with CNS tissue and cause a possible concussive effect. METHODS The modeling approach employed for this investigation consisted of a computational framework suitable for simulating coupled fluid-solid dynamic interactions. The model included a complex finite element mesh of the head and intra-cranial contents. The effects of threshold and 50% lethal blast lung injury were compared with concussive impact injury using the full head model allowing upper and lower bounds of tissue injury to be applied using pulmonary injury as the reference tissue. RESULTS The effects of a 50% lethal dose blast lung injury (LD(50)) were comparable with concussive impact injury using the DVBIC-MIT full head model. INTERPRETATION CNS blast concussive effects were found to be similar between impact mild TBI and the blast field associated with LD(50) lung blast injury sustained without personal protective equipment. With the ubiquitous use of personal protective equipment this suggests that blast concussive effects may more readily ascertained in personnel due to enhanced survivability in the current conflicts.

Nonlinear compressibility effects in fluid-structure interaction and their implications on the air-blast loading of structures

The impulse imparted by a blast wave to a freestanding solid plate is studied analytically and numerically focusing on the case in which nonlinear compressibility effects in the fluid are important, as is the case for explosions in air. The analysis furnishes, in effect, an extension of Taylor’s pioneering contribution to the understanding of the influence of fluid-structure interaction (FSI) on the blast loading of structures [The Scientific Papers of Sir Geoffrey Ingram Taylor, edited by G. K. Batchelor (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1963), Vol. III, pp. 287–303] to the nonlinear range. The limiting cases of extremely heavy and extremely light plates are explored analytically for arbitrary blast intensity, from where it is concluded that a modified nondimensional parameter representing the mass of compressed fluid relative to the mass of the plate governs the FSI. The intermediate asymptotic FSI regime is studied using a numerical method based on a Lagrangian formulation of the Euler equations of compressible flow and conventional shock-capturing techniques. Based on the analytical and numerical results, an approximate formula describing the entire range of relevant FSI conditions is proposed. The main conclusion of this work is that nonlinear fluid compressibility further enhances the beneficial effects of FSI in reducing the impulse transmitted to the structure. More specifically, it is found that transmitted impulse reductions due to FSI when compared to those obtained ignoring FSI effects are more significant than in the acoustic limit. This result can be advantageously exploited in the design and optimization of structures with increased blast resistance.

A virtual test facility for the efficient simulation of solid material response under strong shock and detonation wave loading

A virtual test facility (VTF) for studying the three-dimensional dynamic response of solid materials subject to strong shock and detonation waves has been constructed as part of the research program of the Center for Simulating the Dynamic Response of Materials at the California Institute of Technology. The compressible fluid flow is simulated with a Cartesian finite volume method and treating the solid as an embedded moving body, while a Lagrangian finite element scheme is employed to describe the structural response to the hydrodynamic pressure loading. A temporal splitting method is applied to update the position and velocity of the boundary between time steps. The boundary is represented implicitly in the fluid solver with a level set function that is constructed on-the-fly from the unstructured solid surface mesh. Block-structured mesh adaptation with time step refinement in the fluid allows for the efficient consideration of disparate fluid and solid time scales. We detail the design of the employed object-oriented mesh refinement framework AMROC and outline its effective extension for fluid–structure interaction problems. Further, we describe the parallelization of the most important algorithmic components for distributed memory machines and discuss the applied partitioning strategies. As computational examples for typical VTF applications, we present the dynamic deformation of a tantalum cylinder due to the detonation of an interior solid explosive and the impact of an explosion-induced shock wave on a multi-material soft tissue body.

Fluid-structure interaction effects in the dynamic response of free-standing plates to uniform shock loading

The problem of uniform shocks interacting with free-standing plates is studied analytically and numerically for arbitrary shock intensity and plate mass. The analysis is of interest in the design and interpretation of fluid-structure interaction (FSI) experiments in shock tubes. In contrast to previous work corresponding to the case of incident blast profiles of exponential distribution, all asymptotic limits obtained here are exact. The contributions include the extension of Taylors FSI analysis for acoustic waves, the exact analysis of the asymptotic limits of very heavy and very light plates for arbitrary shock intensity, and a general formula for the transmitted impulse in the intermediate plate mass range. One of the implications is that the impulse transmitted to the plate can be expressed univocally in terms of a single nondimensional compressible FSI parameter.

A Micro–Macroapproach to Predict Stiction due to Surface Contact in Microelectromechanical Systems

Stiction, which results from contact between surfaces, is a major failure mode in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). Indeed, microscopic structures tend to adhere to each other when their surfaces come into contact and when the restoring forces are unable to overcome the interfacial forces. Since incidental contacts cannot be completely excluded and since contacts between moving parts can be part of the normal operation of some types of MEMS, stiction prediction is an important consideration when designing micro- and nanodevices. In this paper, a micro-macro multiscale approach is developed in order to predict possible stiction. At the lower scale, the unloading adhesive contact-distance curves of two interacting rough surfaces are established based on a previously presented model [L. Wu , J. Appl. Phys. 106, 113502, 2009]. In this model, dry conditions are assumed, and only the van der Waals forces as adhesion source are accounted for. The resulting unloading adhesive contact-distance curves are dependent on the material, surface properties such as elastic modulus and surface energy, and rough surface topography parameters (the standard deviation of asperity heights and the asperity density). At the higher scale, a finite element analysis is considered to determine the residual cantilever beam configuration due to the adhesive forces once contact happens. Toward this end, the adhesive contact-distance curve computed previously is integrated on the surface of the finite elements as a contact law. The effects of the design parameters can then be studied for the given material and surface properties.

Influence of adhesive rough surface contact on microswitches

Stiction is a major failure mode in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). Undesirable stiction, which results from contact between surfaces, threatens the reliability of MEMS severely as it breaks the actuation function of MEMS switches, for example. Although it may be possible to avoid stiction by increasing restoring forces using high spring constants, it follows that the actuation voltage has also to be increased significantly, which reduces the efficiency. In our research, an electrostatic-structural analysis is performed to estimate the proper design range of the equivalent spring constant, which is the main factor of restoring force in MEMS switches. The upper limit of equivalent spring constant is evaluated based on the initial gap width, the dielectric thickness, and the expected actuation voltage. The lower limit is assessed on the value of adhesive forces between the two contacting rough surfaces. The MEMS devices studied here are assumed to work in a dry environment. In these operating conditi...

An energy-based variational model of ferromagnetic hysteresis for finite element computations

This paper proposes a macroscopic model for ferromagnetic hysteresis that is well-suited for finite element implementation. The model is readily vectorial and relies on a consistent thermodynamic formulation. In particular, the stored magnetic energy and the dissipated energy are known at all times, and not solely after the completion of closed hysteresis loops as is usually the case. The obtained incremental formulation is variationally consistent, i.e., all internal variables follow from the minimization of a thermodynamic potential.

Serial FEM/XFEM-based update of preoperative brain images using intraoperative MRI

Current neuronavigation systems cannot adapt to changing intraoperative conditions over time. To overcome this limitation, we present an experimental end-to-end system capable of updating 3D preoperative images in the presence of brain shift and successive resections. The heart of our system is a nonrigid registration technique using a biomechanical model, driven by the deformations of key surfaces tracked in successive intraoperative images. The biomechanical model is deformed using FEM or XFEM, depending on the type of deformation under consideration, namely, brain shift or resection. We describe the operation of our system on two patient cases, each comprising five intraoperative MR images, and we demonstrate that our approach significantly improves the alignment of nonrigidly registered images.

Alternative Approaches for the Derivation of Discontinuous Galerkin Methods for Nonlinear Mechanics

Discontinuous Galerkin methods are commonly derived by seeking a weak statement of the governing differential equations via a weighted-average approach allowing for discontinuous fields at the element interfaces of the discretization. In order to ensure consistency and stability of the formulation, this approach requires the definition of a numerical flux and a stabilization term. Discontinuous Galerkin methods may also be formulated from a linear combination of the governing and compatibility equations weighted by suitable operators. A third approach based on a variational statement of a generalized energy functional has been proposed recently for finite elasticity. This alternative approach naturally leads to an expression of the numerical flux and the stabilization terms in the context of large deformation mechanics problems. This paper compares these three approaches and establishes the conditions under which identical formulations are obtained.

Combined implicit-explicit algorithms for non-linear structural dynamics

To solve fast dynamic problems, an explicit method is the most adapted. But for slower dynamics, an implicit method is more stable. The industrial problems are governed by high frequency (impact, …) during short time intervals and slower dynamics (spring-back, …) during other time intervals. The optimal solution is then to have both implicit algorithm and explicit methods readily available in the same code and to be able to switch automatically from one to another. Criteria that decide when to shift from a method to another have been developed here. Implicit balanced restarting conditions that annihilate numerical oscillations resulting for an explicit calculation are also proposed.