1University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
2 The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Ontario Canada
In this talk we survey various approaches to modelling hydocephalus. We shall focus in particular on the application of linear viscoelasticity theory to the modelling of the brain in a simplified geometry. The brain/ventricular cavity is modelled as a thick-walled, tethered tube subjected to a pressure ``pint'' on the interior wall exerted by viscous incompressible cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). The solution to the above problem, when the tube is composed of an isotropic, elastic solid has long been known - we use the elastic/viscoelastic analogy (EVA) to obtain analytic solutions for the case when the tube is composed of a viscoelastic solid. We finally conclude with suggestions of how experimental data could be used to obtain realistic values for the mechanical parameters that appear in the constitutive relation for the viscoelastic solid.