Graduation Semester and Year
2015
Language
English
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering
Department
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
First Advisor
Ashfaq Adnan
Abstract
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) accounts to almost one fifth of total fatal injuries. Even though there are various mechanisms hypothesized for the causes leading to TBI, diffuse axonal injury (DAI) is found to be the most observed criterion. The reason for axonal failure in DAI has been studied extensively using experimental and computational models. It was found that axons behave like viscoelastic materials, thus exhibiting rate dependent behavior under loading. This viscoelastic behavior of axons is believed to drive the failure of axons and its substructures. It was observed that axon failure is caused by failures and distortions in axonal cytoskeleton, particularly Microtubule-Tau protein assembly.Inspired by the previous work, we have developed modified shear lag model to predict axonal damage under dynamic loading conditions. Opposed to previous work where only tau proteins were considered viscoelastic, we have assumed both microtubules and tau proteins to be viscoelastic and modeled them using a two parameter kelvin model. We have then studied the effect of strain rate on viscoelastic response of microtubule –tau protein assembly. We have attempted to determine a phase diagram in terms of loading rate and applied strain to isolate the two possible axonal deformation modes, namely microtubule failure due to excessive stretch and reversible microtubule sliding due to tau protein stretch
Keywords
Microtubules, Viscoelastic, TBI
Disciplines
Aerospace Engineering | Engineering | Mechanical Engineering
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Jonnalagadda, Manikanta, "TBI induced rate dependent viscoelastic response of axon: Predictions from a mathematical model" (2015). Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses. 931.
https://mavmatrix.uta.edu/mechaerospace_theses/931
Comments
Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington