Anatomically accurate finite element model of a human head for crash applications

Every year road traffic accidents are responsible of approximately 1.3 million deaths in the world, resulting in one of the main causes of mortality. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), by the 2020s road traffic accidents will be the leading cause of premature death. Moreover, between 20 and 50 million people involved in incidents suffer non-fatal injuries, most of them leading to disabilities [1]. These injuries considerably affect individuals, their families, and nations from both social and economic points of view. Over the last 60 years, experimental activities focused on the impact behavior of the human body were carried out with crash dummies and human cadavers, expanding the available injury database, exposing the most common injury scenarios and allowing the development of effective predictive criteria. The most frequently injured body regions resulted to be head and lower limbs; however severe to fatal injuries (Abbreviate Injury Scale values AIS 3+), are more commonly related to head impacts, as shown in Figure 1 [2].