A new biomechanically-based criterion for lateral skull fracture

This work develops a skull fracture criterion for lateral impact-induced head injury using postmortem human subject tests, anatomical test device measurements, statistical analyses, and finite element modeling. It is shown that skull fracture correlates with the tensile strain in the compact tables of the cranial bone as calculated by the finite element model and that the Skull Fracture Correlate (SFC), the average acceleration over the HIC time interval, is the best predictor of skull fracture. For 15% or less probability of skull fracture the lateral skull fracture criterion is SFC < 120 g, which is the same as the frontal criterion derived earlier. The biomechanical basis of SFC is established by its correlation with strain.