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Craniocerebral injury has been a research focus in the field of injury biomechanics. Although experimental endeavors have made certain progress in characterizing the material behavior of the brain, the temperature dependency of brain mechanics appears to be inconclusive thus far. To partially address this knowledge gap, the current study measured the brain material behavior via unconstrained uniaxial compression tests under low strain rate (0.0083 s-1) and high strain rate (0.83 s-1) at four different sample temperatures (13°C, 20°C, 27°C, and 37°C). Each group has 9~12 samples. One-way analysis of variance method was used to study the influence of sample temperature on engineering stress. The results show that the effect of sample temperature on the mechanical properties of brain tissue is significant under the high strain rate, especially at low temperature (13°C), in which the hardening of the brain tissue is very obvious. At the low strain rate, no temperature dependency of brain mechanics is noted. Therefore, the current results highlight that the temperature of the brain sample should be ensured to be in accordance with the living subject when studying the biomechanical response of living tissue.

Background. The number of sport utility vehicles (SUVs) on China market is continuously increasing. It is necessary to investigate the relationships between the front-end styling features of SUVs and head injuries at the styling design stage for improving the pedestrian protection performance and product development efficiency. Methods. Styling feature parameters were extracted from the SUV side contour line. And simplified finite element models were established based on the 78 SUV side contour lines. Pedestrian headform impact simulations were performed and validated. The head injury criterion of 15 ms (HIC15) at four wrap-around distances was obtained. A multiple linear regression analysis method was employed to describe the relationships between the styling feature parameters and the HIC15 at each impact point. Results. The relationship between the selected styling features and the HIC15 showed reasonable correlations, and the regression models and the selected independent variables showed statistical significance. Conclusions. The regression equations obtained by multiple linear regression can be used to assess the performance of SUV styling in protecting pedestrians’ heads and provide styling designers with technical guidance regarding their artistic creations.