The mathematical structure of the Head Injury Criterion (HIC) function
al is described. Necessary conditions for the extremal solution of the
HIC functional are presented, along with results characterizing the c
ritical points of the functional. A program written in Borland C is de
veloped to construct the HIC functional, and various characteristics o
f the HIC are determined from the constructed functional, including th
e average HIC value, HIC variance, and higher-order HIC moments. By in
vestigating the form of the HIC functional, it is possible to extract
structural information by the computation of the moments of the functi
onal. Sample functional plots for experimental acceleration pulses are
also provided. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.