Expanded Combined Loading Injury Criterion for the Human Lumbar Spine Under Dynamic Compression

Abstract

Contemporary injury tolerance of the lumbar spine for under-body blast references axial compression and bending moments in a limited range. Since injuries often occur in a wider range of flexion and extension with increased moment contribution, this study expands a previously proposed combined loading injury criterion for the lumbar spine. Fifteen cadaveric lumbar spine failure tests with greater magnitudes of eccentric loading were incorporated into an existing injury criterion to augment its applicability and a combined loading injury risk model was proposed by means of survival analysis. A loglogistic distribution was the most representative of injury risk, resulting in optimized critical values of F_r,crit = 6011 N, and M_y,crit = 904 Nm for the proposed combined loading metric. The 50% probability of injury resulted in a combined loading metric value of 1, with 0.59 and 1.7 corresponding to 5 and 95% injury risk, respectively. The inclusion of eccentric loaded specimens resulted in an increased contribution of the bending moment relative to the previously investigated flexion/extension range (previous M_y,crit = 1155 Nm), with the contribution of the resultant sagittal force reduced by nearly 200 N (previous F_r,crit = 5824 N). The new critical values reflect an expanded flexion/extension range of applicability of the previously proposed combined loading injury criterion for the human lumbar spine during dynamic compression.