: Temporal comparison theory and elderly satisfaction with their body : a preliminary study

In a forensic investigation, there is considerabledifficulty in distinguishing between different mechanisms thatcould explain the head injury sustained. The key question isoften whether the injury was the consequence of a fall, a blow,or a fall caused by a blow. Better understanding of theparameters influencing the mechanism of skull fracture couldbe of use when attempting to distinguish between differentcauses of injury. Numerous parameters concerning fallconditions and biological variability are reported in theliterature to influence the mechanism of skull fracture. Atthe current time, there are no studies that investigate both theeffect of a fall and biological parameters. The aim of this paperis to study the influence of these parameters on the mechanismof skull fracture using a numerical approach. We focused onaccidental falls from a standing height. A multibody modelwas used to estimate head impact velocities and a finiteelement model was used to investigate the effect of the fallconditions and of biological variability on skull fracture. Theresults show that the mechanism of skull fractures isinfluenced by a combination of at least four parameters:impact velocity, impact surface, cortical thickness and corticaldensity