Materials Science and Engineering Commons^™

Structure-Function Relationships Of Bighorn Sheep Horncore Bone And Horn-Horncore Interface Materials For Energy Absorption Applications, Luca H. Fuller

Doctoral Dissertations

Bighorn sheep rams do not show overt signs of traumatic brain injury from head impacts experienced during intraspecific combat. Rams’ cranial appendages bear the brunt of ramming impacts and are composed of a keratin-rich horn anchored to a bony horncore via a soft connective tissue interface. The horncore is filled with velar bone which has a unique porous architecture with a comparable bone volume fraction, but larger strut thickness and separation than typical mammalian trabecular bone. Velar bone absorbs more energy than the horn and substantially reduces post-impact brain cavity accelerations in computational models of bighorn sheep ramming. These findings …