A coupled physical-computational methodology for the investigation of short fall related infant head impact injury

Head injury in childhood is the most common cause of death or permanent disability from injury. However, insufficient understanding exists of the response of a child’s head to injurious loading scenarios to establish cause and effect relationships to assist forensic and safetly investigations. Largely as a result of a lack of availability of paediatric clinical and Post-Mortem-Human-Surrogate (PMHS) experimental data, a new approach to infant head injury experimentation has been developed. A coupled-methodology, combining a physical infant head surrogate, producing “real world” global, regional and localised impact response data and a computational Finite-Element (FE-head) model was created and validated against available PMHS and physical model global impact response data. Experimental impact simulations were performed to investigate regional and localised injury vulnerability. Different regions of the head produced accelerations significantly greater than those calculated using the currently available method of measuring the global, whole head response. The majority of material strain was produced within the relatively elastic suture and fontanelle regions, rather than the skull bones. A subsequent parametric analysis was conducted to provide a correlation between fall height and areas of maximum-stress-response and fracture-risk-probability. The FE-head was further applied to investigating fracture risk, simulating injurious PMHS impacts and a good qualitative match was observed. The FE-head shows significant potential for the study of infant head injury and is anticipated to be a motivating tool for the improvement of head injury understanding across a range of potentially injurious head loading scenarios

Characterization of Infant Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Delivery with Range Sensor Feedback on Performance

Cardiac arrest (CA) in infants is an issue worldwide, which causes significant morbidity and mortality rates. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is a technique performed in case of CA to save victims’ lives. However, CPR is often not performed effectively, even when delivered by qualified rescuers. Therefore, international guidelines have proposed applying a CPR feedback device to achieve high-quality application of CPR to enhance survival rates. Currently, no feedback device is available to guide learners through infant CPR performance in contrast to a number of adult CPR feedback devices. This study presents a real-time feedback system to improve infant CPR performance by medical staff and laypersons using a commercial CPR infant manikin. The proposed system uses an IR sensor to compare CPR performance obtained with no feedback and with a real-time feedback system. Performance was validated by analysis of the CPR parameters actually delivered against the recommended target parameters. Results show that the real-time feedback system significantly improves the quality of chest compression parameters. The two-thumb compression technique is the achievable and appropriate mechanism applied to infant subjects for delivering high-quality CPR. Under the social distancing constraints imposed by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, the results from the training device were sent to a CPR training center and provided each participant with CPR proficiency

Corrosion Behavior of Aluminium-Coated Cans

Hundreds of billions of aluminium-based cans are manufactured and used every year worldwide including those containing soft drinks. This study investigates and evaluates the performance and quality of two well-known energy and soft drinks brands, Green Cola and Red Bull. Recent health hazards and concerns have been associated with aluminium leakage and bisphenol A (BPA) dissociation from the can’s internal protective coating. The cans were examined under four conditions, including coated and uncoated samples, the soft drink’s main solution, and 0.1 M acetic acid solution. Electrochemical measurements such as potentiodynamic polarization and impedance spectroscopy (EIS), element analyses using inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES), and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) were performed. In addition, sample characterization by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction spectroscopy (XRD) were employed to comprehensively study and analyze the effect of corrosion on the samples. Even though the internal coating provided superior corrosion protection concerning main or acetic acid solutions, it failed to prevent aluminium from dissolving in the electrolyte. Green Cola’s primary solution appears to be extremely corrosive, as the corrosion rate increased by approximately 333% relative to the acetic acid solution. Uncoated samples resulted in increases in the percentage of oxygen, the appearance of more corrosion spots, and decreases in crystallinity. The ICP-OES test detected dangerous levels of aluminium in the Green Cola solution, which increased significantly after increasing the conductivity of the solution