Skull specimens were extracted from the full thickness of human crania, with both the inner and outer surfaces intact. The morphology of these specimens had been previously characterized with high-resolution micro-computed tomography (~5 um resolution). A subset of these specimens were directly loaded in the direction normal to the outer surface in quasi-static compression. Many potential sources of error present in previous studies were avoided. First, the skull specimens were stored and loaded fresh, without embalming. Furthermore, non-contact strain measurements were made with digital image correlation directly on the specimen surface, as well as on the compression platens avoiding errors due to machine compliance and irregularities in the loading surfaces of the specimen. The compressive response is presented as apparent properties observed at the macroscopic scale of the entire heterogeneous structure. Additionally, a power law was used to represent the relationship between response and the morphology. This relationship was used to predict the modulus depth dependency. The mechanical properties, density, and thickness of the skull layers are presented for use in finite element simulations to model the skull with varying degrees of complexity: a single homogenous layer, three-layer sandwich or multilayer heterogeneous structure
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