Investigating hockey helmeted impacts to mitigate concussion risks using a hybrid experimental and computational approach

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Concussion emerges as a significant issue for Canadian professional and amateur players involved in sports, especially contact sports such as hockey and football. However, the unresolved challenge is to understand how different helmet designs help the brain, which is enclosed inside the stiff skull and hard to experimentally observe. Hence, we will conduct advanced computational simulations to understand how different helmeted impacts affect brain mechanical responses. The proposed research includes four sections of work that are tightly integrated. First, we will conduct high-rate impacts to understand head linear and rotational motions. Second, we will conduct advanced modeling to systematically understand how various impacts affect brain strains as well brain axonal strains. Such a systematic understanding between helmet designs and brain responses is urgently needed and will be achieved through a combined experimental and numerical approach proposed in this project. Third, we will conduct a thorough statistical analysis to understand the correlations between various helmets and head responses including linear acceleration, rotational acceleration, kinematics score, and brain responses. Finally, we will incorporate finite element hockey helmet model and human model and study how various helmet designs could contribute to minimizing brain strains, hence making helmets safer for the human brain. Overall, this project will help develop new helmets that can better help a human brain rather than reducing the head kinematics of a dummy head.