Novel instrumentation and models for biomechanical assessment of engineered protection devices

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Head and brain injury affects all sectors of society: everyday civilians; military personnel; law enforcement personnel; and youth, adult, amateur and professional athletes. In civilian settings, head injuries occur through blunt impact in automotive collisions and sport incidents. In military and law enforcement, they can occur from blunt impact, ballistic impacts on helmets, and exposure to blast from explosives. Taken together, head-brain injury leads to societal costs of $Billions as well as long term suffering in the injured individual.Engineers play a vital role in understanding, and indeed in designing engineered protection devices for, head protection devices (i.e. helmets). The ability to protect the head is tested using models that fall into one of two categories. The first is metal-rubber experimental models that rely on measurements of parameters including (but not limited to) acceleration due to impact, or pressure in blast, that to varying degrees of accuracy can estimate protection by quantifying how well the protection device limits these accelerations or pressures. The second is computer models that strive to estimate capacity for protection by estimating the amount of impact or blast energy prevented from affecting the human. Computer models require validation to ensure that their outputs exhibit realism and as of now they are not widely used in standardized certification and assessment of protection devices partially because their validation is ongoing. Experimental models are widespread and used in standardized testing and certification, however they are often criticized as poor models for the human. This latter concern stems from the fact that most are constructed to be mechanically robust and re-usable, and as a result they don't, in many cases, accurately model the response of the relatively frailer human. The proposed program addresses these limitations by developing mechanically realistic experimental models and advanced instrumentation that quantify mitigation in mechanical exposure to impact and blast. To protect against these injuries while attempting to lessen the physical burden of the headgear-wearer, protective headgear is being developed with novel material architectures that strive for light-weight while retaining protective efficacy. Preventing transfer of mechanical impact and blast energy is the central goal behind headgear design, and therefore accurate mechanical models and instrumentation are vital in their assessment.