Piecewise parabolic method for propagation of shear shock waves in relaxing soft solids: One-dimensional case

Shear shock waves can be generated spontaneously deep within the brain during a traumatic injury. This recently observed behavior could be a primary mechanism for the generation of traumatic brain injuries. However, shear shock wave physics and its numerical modeling are relatively unstudied. Existing numerical solvers used in biomechanics are not designed for the extremely large Mach numbers (greater than 1) observed in the brain. Furthermore, soft solids, such as the brain, have a complex nonclassical viscoleastic response, which must be accurately modeled to capture the nonlinear wave behavior. Here, we develop a 1D inviscid velocity-stress–like system to model the propagation of shear shock waves in a homogeneous medium. Then a generalized Maxwell body is used to model a relaxing medium that can describe experimentally determined attenuation laws. Finally, the resulting system is solved numerically with the piecewise parabolic method, a high-order finite volume method. The nonlinear and the relaxing components of this method are validated with theoretical predictions. Comparisons between numerical solutions obtained for the proposed model and the experiments of plane shear shock wave propagation based on high frame-rate ultrasound imaging and tracking are shown to be in excellent agreement.