Development and mechanical characterization of artificial surrogates for brain tissues

In the 21st century, trauma injury due to direct head impact in accidents and collisions or blast exposure is the most important research area, which is poorly understood to date. Due to ethical and biosafety concerns, limited studies have reported on the experimental research on brain tissue and have investigated the mechanics and mechanical properties of human brain tissue. In this work, novel surrogates were fabricated using a castable and low-cost material system to imitate the mechanical behavior of the human brain tissue. The tissue surrogates were developed through iterative mixing of a four-part polymeric material at specific ratios to mimic the mechanical properties of the natural human brain tissue. The tissue surrogates were tested at six different displacement rates (low to high) to simulate a range of loading scenarios. Hyperelastic material models were employed to characterize the non-linear behavior of the fabricated brain tissue surrogates. Such tissue surrogates with precisely characterized mechanical properties would be beneficial for studying a wide range of traumatic brain injuries and simulating brain surgeries for training purposes.