Numerical study of 10-year-old child forearm injury

Abstract

Forearm fractures in children are very common among all pediatric fractures. However, biomechanical investigations on the pediatric forearm are rather scarce, partially due to the complex anatomy, closely situated, interrelated structures, highly dynamic movement patterns, and lack of appropriate tools. The purpose of this study is to develop a computational tool for child forearm investigation and characterize the mechanical responses of a backward fall using the computational model. A threedimensional 10-year-old child forearm finite element (FE) model, which includes the ulna, radius, carpal bones, metacarpals, phalanges, cartilages and ligaments, was developed. The high-quality hexahedral FE meshes were created using a multi-block approach to ensure computational accuracy. The material properties of the FE model were obtained by scaling reported adult experimental data. The design of computational experiments was performed to investigate material sensitivity and the effects of relevant parameters in backward fall. Numerical results provided a spectrum of child forearm responses with various effective masses and forearm angles. In addition, a conceptual L-shape wrist guard design was simulated and found to be able to reduce child distal radius fracture.

Impact testing of snowboarding wrist protectors

“…Such work could use more impact energies and extra measurement techniques, such as pressure sensors on the surrogate 58,59,64 and digital image correlation, 66 alongside finite element modeling. 45,[47][48][49] The rig could serve as a tool to check the accuracy of finite element models of wrist protectors. Such finite element models would be well suited to assess the effect on impact performance when changing materials, splint dimensions, and palmar pad dimensions.…”

“…Researchers have used various surrogates, rigs and energies to simulate wrist-surface impacts with discrepancies between studies. [43][44][45][46] Finite element models of wrist protectors have also been presented, [47][48][49] but only offer simple representations of products that are not ideal for assessing design features.…”

Finite Element Model of an Impact on a Palmar Pad from a Snowboard Wrist Protector

“…Previous studies have attempted to create FE models of snowboard wrist protectors (e.g., Mao et al [6] and Thoraval et al [7]), but these have been overly simplified. The following study aims to develop and validate an FE model for an impact on the palmar pad from a wrist protector, with future work building to a complete wrist protector.…”

Development of methods to evaluate the performance of snowboard wrist protectors

“…Wrist protector applied to the FEA model and stress contour comparison with and without protector(Mao, Cai and Yang, 2014) Lehner et al (2014) also used a combination of computer-aided engineering (CAE) tools to simulate falling scenarios and study the functional design of wrist protectors.…”