The I-PREDICT 50th Percentile Male Warfighter Finite Element Model: Development and Validation of the Thoracolumbar Spine

Military personnel are commonly at risk of lower back pain and thoracolumbar spine injury. Human volunteers and postmortem human subjects have been used to understand the scenarios where injury can occur and the tolerance of the warfighter to these loading regimes. Finite element human body models (HBMs) can accurately simulate the mechanics of the human body and are a useful tool for understanding injury. In this study, a HBM thoracolumbar spine was developed and hierarchically validated as part of the Incapacitation Prediction for Readiness in Expeditionary Domains: an Integrated Computational Tool (I-PREDICT) program. Constitutive material models were sourced from literature and the vertebrae and intervertebral discs were hexahedrally meshed from a 50th percentile male CAD dataset. Ligaments were modeled through attaching beam elements at the appropriate anatomical insertion sites. 94 simulations were replicated from experimental PMHS tests at the vertebral body, functional spinal unit (FSU), and regional lumbar spine levels. The BioRank (BRS) biofidelity ranking system was used to assess the response of the I-PREDICT model. At the vertebral body level, the I-PREDICT model showed good agreement with experimental results. The I-PREDICT FSUs showed good agreement in tension and compression and had comparable stiffness values in flexion, extension, and axial rotation. The regional lumbar spine exhibited “good” biofidelity when tested in tension, compression, extension, flexion, posterior shear, and anterior shear (BRS regional average = 1.05). The validated thoracolumbar spine of the I-PREDICT model can be used to better understand and mitigate injury risk to the warfighter.