  Traumatic brain injury [TBI] has become a signature injury of current
military conflicts, with debilitating, costly, and long-lasting effects.
Although mechanisms by which head impacts cause TBI have been well-researched,
the mechanisms by which blasts cause TBI are not understood. From numerical
hydrodynamic simulations, we have discovered that non-lethal blasts can induce
sufficient skull flexure to generate potentially damaging loads in the brain,
even without a head impact. The possibility that this mechanism may contribute
to TBI has implications for injury diagnosis and armor design.
