A Preliminary Investigation of Damage in Marine Mammal Tissue due to Mechanical Loads using Silicone Rubberdissertationssimpson, tarik matthewcreatorMathiowitz, EdithReaderCrisco, JosephReaderGray, MarissaReaderSrivastava, VikasAdvisorBrown University. Biology and Medicine: Biomedical Engineeringsponsor2025, None p.born digitalThesis (Sc. M.)--Brown University, 2025thesesUnderwater shock waves can cause harm to a variety of marine life. This problem can be detrimental to marine mammals that rely on echolocation. As an example, underwater impact and acoustic shock waves can cause irreparable damage marine mammal melon (in toothed whales), which assists these animals in hunting and communication. The adverse effects to these creatures caused by underwater impact forces or shock waves could cause long-lasting problems to the ecosystem, such as extinction and the overpopulation of their known prey [2]. It will be of value to understand what happens to the melon or other critical soft tissues in marine mammals under various amounts of force. Surrogate materials such as Ecoflex 300 have been used to investigate the potential mechanical damage to melon. We have conducted preliminary research to use the same surrogate material at different concentrations and applied various forces on the materials to study if there is any change in the material after the force is applied.Materials--Mechanical propertiesMarine melonMarine mammalogyToothed whalesEnglishRPB20250707