Eventos Anais de eventos
MECSOL 2022
8th International Symposium on Solid Mechanics
Comparative analysis of impact absorption capacity of football helmets
Submission Author:
Ana Paula Carvalho da Silva Ferreira , PR
Co-Authors:
Lucas Viezzer, Ana Paula Carvalho da Silva Ferreira, Celso Mendonça, Luciano Zart Olanyk
Presenter: Ana Paula Carvalho da Silva Ferreira
doi://10.26678/ABCM.MECSOL2022.MSL22-0081
Abstract
The sports industry and medicine are constantly seeking to develop new impact-absorbing technologies in order to reduce the incidence of head injuries. The traditional football helmet models, widely used, have the concept of an external hard shell, with a padding of polymers, focused on energy absorption. An American startup from Seattle developed a completely new concept that consists of an internal hard shell, an external soft shell and an interface of columnar elements. In situations of impact, the outer layer deforms elastically at the point of contact, while the interface structure deforms through buckling and bending mechanisms, and then return to their original shape, dissipating a larger portion of energy and decreasing the peak impact force. Experimental tests conclude that the new concept is the safest to prevent injury. In this context, the present research seeks to qualitatively, through finite element models, validate the results obtained. Initially, the properties of the materials (polycarbonates, foam and rubber) and other important information for each helmet are defined, based on publicly available models. The software Abaqus Explicit is used, developing a numerical model from the experimental system used by the Virginia Tech University. The resulting acceleration data is taken from nodes on the innermost surface of the helmet model, in the region where impact occurs. The literature presents similar graphs for the resulting acceleration, and it can be concluded that there is a qualitative validation for the results obtained in this work. It is verified that the new helmet concept presents a resulting acceleration 70% lower when compared to the traditional concept. The values for the Brain Injury Criterion (BIC) calculated are 0.0047 for the traditional model and 0.0018 for the new model. Thus, the new model has a significantly lower criterion than the traditional one, proving to be less susceptible to brain injury.
Keywords
Football helmet, head injury, Impact, Energy Absorption, Finite Elements
