BIOMECHANICAL STUDY OF GOLF BALL IMPACT ON CHILD’S HEAD USING THE FINITE ELEMENT METHOD

Head traumatic injury due to the impact of a flying golf ball is one of the severest injuries sustained on a golf course. This paper presents numerical simulation results based on the finite element (FE) method to investigate head injuries in children due to impacts by flying golf balls. The energy flow and its flow rate from the golf ball to the child's head and the structural intensity (spatial distribution pattern of energy or the energy flow rate per unit cross sectional area) were calculated for various combinations of impact speed, falling angle of the golf ball just before impact, and impact location. The head injuries were also assessed using the accepted traumatic head injury criteria of skull stress and intracranial pressure. Analyses using the energy flow magnitude and distribution, and the dynamic response quantities provided us with insights of the traumatic head injury mechanism and the possible injury patterns resulting from impact of a golf ball. We found that a child was more prone to head injury when the golf ball impacts the frontal and side-temporal areas. Impact on the back of the head was least likely to induce traumatic head injury. An impact on the frontal part of the head was more likely to induce brain injury compared to a side impact. And a frontal impact might lead to a depressed skull injury while a side impact might induce a linear skull fracture because of the more biased directional energy flow pattern. All the quantities regarding energy flow quantities increase with the squared increment of the golf flying velocity, while the stress in skull and pressure in brain are almost linearly increasing with the velocity. The simulated results were found to positively predict the children head injuries resulting from the flying golf ball impact in published clinical reports.