Christian Franck
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Seminar Information
Blast exposure is a major cause of traumatic brain injury (TBI) in the military population, often termed the silent epidemic of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, yet the underlying physical mechanisms of blast-induced TBI (bTBI) remain surprisingly unresolved. Although a wide range of biological pathologies have been reported, direct causation between blast loading and injurious brain deformation has been difficult to establish due to the extremely short time scales of blast impulses, the inaccessibility of intracranial strain measurements, the complex geometry and material behavior of the brain, and the limited availability of facilities capable of generating controlled, open-field–like blast exposures. In this talk, I will share our most recent results on experimentally measured blast-induced deformations in skull–brain phantoms using a state-of-the-art Advanced Blast Simulator to elucidate the governing deformation mechanism. A biofidelic brain phantom embedded with a speckle pattern is subjected to well-controlled blast exposures and imaged using a dual-camera system, followed by digital image correlation (DIC) for deformation quantification. This combined approach enables simultaneous observation of ultra-fast events driven by the primary wave and the later-stage material deformations via the much slower shear waves. I will conclude my presentation by connecting the physically observed deformations with pathological predictions from our ex vivo organotypic brain tissue slice model to provide much needed insight into a biophysically-routed mechanism that explains some of the key findings from post-mortem human data on bTBI.
Christian Franck is the Bjorn Borgen Professor in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the acting director of the Center for Traumatic Brain Injury at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the ONR-funded "Physics-based Neutralization of Threats to Human Tissues and Organs" (PANTHER) program, which focuses on advanced detection and prevention of traumatic brain injuries.
He received his B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Virginia in 2003, and his M.S. and Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 2004 and 2008. Dr. Franck held a post-doctoral position at Harvard investigating brain and neural trauma in 2009, and was on the faculty in Solid Mechanics in the School of Engineering at Brown University from 2009 to 2018. He is a fellow of both the Society for Experimental Mechanics and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. His lab has focuses on the development of new experimental techniques to provide unprecedented spatiotemporal access to problems in cellular biomechanics and the mechanics of soft materials
Christian Franck is the Bjorn Borgen Professor in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the acting director of the Center for Traumatic Brain Injury at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the ONR-funded "Physics-based Neutralization of Threats to Human Tissues and Organs" (PANTHER) program, which focuses on advanced detection and prevention of traumatic brain injuries.
He received his B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Virginia in 2003, and his M.S. and Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 2004 and 2008. Dr. Franck held a post-doctoral position at Harvard investigating brain and neural trauma in 2009, and was on the faculty in Solid Mechanics in the School of Engineering at Brown University from 2009 to 2018. He is a fellow of both the Society for Experimental Mechanics and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. His lab has focuses on the development of new experimental techniques to provide unprecedented spatiotemporal access to problems in cellular biomechanics and the mechanics of soft materials