Research shows tennis ball 脑震荡 是罕见的, but possible

达拉斯(SMU) – It’s well-known that football and soccer can potentially cause 脑震荡 以及其他球员的头部受伤. 那网球呢??

Is being struck in the head by a tennis ball enough to cause a concussion? And how fast does a tennis ball need to be going to possibly cause traumatic brain injury?

的研究人员 SMU, a nationally-ranked Dallas-based private university, 做了详细的, computational 研究 – utilizing the same technique widely-used by researchers to predict what head injuries might occur if there was a car or plane accident – to answer these and other questions. 的 研究 was published in the ASME Journal of Applied Mechanics. 

Xin-Lin高, 新大机械工程教授, 李永强, a former SMU PhD student who worked with Gao, analyzed what would happen to a male’s head if it was hit by a tennis ball at different speeds or locations.  

他们发现:

• 轻度创伤性脑损伤, 或者脑震荡, 是罕见的, but can happen when the velocity of the tennis ball is higher than 40 m/s. To put that in perspective, that’s faster than a cheetah can run. 
• A ball striking the side of the head was most likely to cause a head injury, compared to being struck in the forehead or the top of the head. 
• Head injuries were also more common when the ball hit someone at a 90-degree angle, 而不是30或60度角. 
• But spinning of the ball was not found to have any significant impact on causing a head injury. 

“Understanding and protecting against head injuries induced by tennis ball impacts is very important, given that tennis is a worldwide sport with tens of millions of participants every year,高说.

高和李, who is now an associate professor at the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, were specifically focused on determining if a tennis ball could cause a head injury that was severe enough to be classified as a traumatic brain injury — when a forceful bump, blow or jolt to the head or body causes a disruption to the normal function of the brain.

Concussions are classified as mild TBIs, because they aren’t life-threatening. But they can cause lasting problems for weeks or months, 比如头痛, 头晕和注意力不集中. 

的 researchers based their findings on an 雕刻精细模型 一个人的头.

More research is needed for women and children, though lead researcher Gao said the findings would likely be similar for both groups.

这项研究是如何完成的

For this 研究, the researchers used two so-called 有限元(FE)模型: one of a tennis ball and one 一个人的头.     

这个头部模型是由 全球人体模型协会 (GHBMC), 制作逼真的3D人体模型, women and children that can be used for crash simulations. Researchers regularly use these (FE) models of the head to investigate potential brain injuries due to head impacts. 

高和李 created a computer-generated tennis ball based on experiments with real ones. 

A simple way to understand finite element modeling is to look at it as separating a large mathematical problem into a series of smaller ones, 或者是有限元素. This makes the overall problem easier to investigate. 

广受工程师欢迎, 有限元建模可以, 例如, be used by automaking manufacturers to assess the potential for human injuries from a crash with one of their vehicles. 

This 研究 used FE models to predict how the brain would behave 当受到外力时. 的 researchers did this by giving a computer system called LS-DYNA several mathematical algorithms that represented characteristics of the ball or the man’s head. 例如, an algorithm made for testing rubber elasticity – known as the Ogden hyperelastic model – was used to represent the behavior of brain tissues. 

Based on these types of equations, LS-DYNA created 3D simulations of what would happen in real-life.

的 measurements taken from these simulations are what allowed the researchers to determine if the force of a tennis ball – going at different speeds or hitting a different part of the head – was enough to cause a man’s brain tissue to bang against his skull, 导致脑震荡甚至更严重. 

以确保他们的发现是准确的, 高和李 validated them with previous TBI research, like experiments on human cadavers and observations of people with known 脑震荡. 

Gao and his research team have also published studies on head injuries induced by golf ball strikes and ballistic impacts.

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