Graduation Semester and Year
Summer 2025
Language
English
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy in Mechanical Engineering
Department
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
First Advisor
Dr. Ashfaq Adnan
Abstract
There is a wide gamut of challenges when it comes to modeling and prediction of brain injuries. Approaching this problem as an engineering one, the ideal approach would be to establish a connection between two challenges, one being the mechanical failure or damage to crucial neural structures of the human head, and the other being the psychological harm that can be used to numerically measure the severity of brain injury. Furthermore, the damage indicators that aid in quantifying injury severity at a macroscopic level are fundamentally different than the counterparts at a microscopic level.
As a corollary, the need to formulate markers for various injuries in conjunction with measurements of associated injury mechanisms on a live subject necessitates simulated models for the brain at relevant length scales. The long-lasting effect of this research work entails corelating blast-induced brain trauma with multiscale damage progression in the brain from a bottom-up approach. At the macroscale ( m) the brain is composed of two sections, the grey and the white matter. Grey matter predominantly manifests as cortical columns (mesoscale: m), which are six layered structures made up of 8–10,000 neurons with unmyelinated axons. Myelin sheath contributes to insulating the nerve cells and establishing an uninterrupted signal transmission with the rest of the brain. Impaired neurotransmission is probable disarray at the cellular level following trauma. This research comprises modeling sub cellular and cellular structures of myelin sheath and studying the mechanics of the response under varying degrees of load applications. This research highlights the cellular-level mechanisms of myelin damage due to quasistatic and dynamic mechanical load and provides the foundation for developing a bottom-up approach of computational axon modeling.
Keywords
Myelin Sheath, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), Injury, Cellular biomechanics, Lipid Bilayer, Myelin Sheath, Myelin Basic Protein (MBP), Multilayer, Interfacial response, Shock study, Lipid rupture.
Disciplines
Mechanical Engineering
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Maliha, Fairuz, "CELLULAR BIOMECHANICS OF BRAIN'S WHITE MATTER" (2025). Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Dissertations. 435.
https://mavmatrix.uta.edu/mechaerospace_dissertations/435