CAMCS
Vision Research
Computational Model of the Eye for Primary and Secondary Blast Trauma
The majority of ocular combat injuries are caused by blasts from munitions and improvised explosive devices (IED). Most of these are from propelled fragments and blunt force trauma resulting in visually detectable intraocular foreign bodies and open globe injuries. However, the incidence of primary injuries from the blast wave remains unknown. Survivable primary blast injuries are likely accompanied by injuries from fragments and blunt-force and are more difficult to identify and count. Moreover, the severity of the blast injuries and distance of the tertiary care facility from the injury site means that often patients are unable and witnesses are unavailable to recount the injury event. The same limitations hinder clinical studies of the effectiveness of current eye ar-mor, developed for ballistic and laser protection, in preventing blast injuries.
The objective of this program is to develop an experimentally validated computational model of the eye and apply the model to the following research questions:
- Determine and compare the stresses and deformations incurred by the eye-wall and criti-cal ocular components from blast overpressures, and impacting and penetrating frag-ments.
- Investigate the interaction between the standard issue eye armor and the blast wave, and its effect on the mechanical loading of the eye.