Sport currently is responsible of up to 25% of severe eye injuries1. Due to the importance of the eye, its injuries involve many ophthalmologists2 to diminish the number of visual impairment as a result of sport-related injuries3. Since a quantity of players interested in sport clubs is increasing all around the world4, the risk of eye injuries among them is growing at a fast pace accordingly. Consequently, there is a need to recognize the risk factors in connection with injury and try to minimize them5,6. The most severe form of these injuries might be the globe rupture. It has been reported that 9% of all ruptured globes worldwide were caused by sport activities7. Rupture may happen whether because of a relatively high Intraocular Pressure …show more content…
18 performed a numerical Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) study to compute the stresses and deformations in the eye components as a result of tennis ball impact. Although their results revealed the severity of injury due to the ball impact, the injury that would occur to the eye may vary according to the balls’ size, angle of impact, speed, intra pressure as well as the mechanical properties. Since it is not plausible to quantify the stresses and deformations of the human eye experimentally after ball impact to the eye, numerical modeling, such as Finite Element (FE) or Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) computational models, would be deemed helpful to show the severity of injury quantitatively. This study was aimed to compute the stresses and deformations along with its mechanisms of injury due to the ball impact to the human eye components using a Three-Dimensional (3D) computational FSI model. The proposed model enabled to simulate the deformation of the eye components arising from ball impact in all components of the eye, including vitreous body, aqueous, intraconal and extraconal fat, optic nerve, muscle, retina, iris, lens, cornea, ciliary body, and sclera. The degree of damage, in the current study, was reported as von Mises stress. Finally, it was goaled to optimize the features of the balls, including the diameter, intra pressure, and elastic modulus, via an intelligent dynamic Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) algorithm to be able to be used in designing a basketball with the least amount of injury to the eye