Design and Virtual Testing of American Football Helmets–A Review

Abstract

This paper aims to review the recent progress in the research carried out by scientists worldwide regarding American Footballers' head injuries and head protective equipment, focusing on the role of computation methods, mainly finite element method application to American Football helmet design and testing as well as head injury biomechanics. The helmet technology has been constantly improved, and it is driven by market competition, medical records, coaches and athletes' self-awareness. With finite element analysis and computational resources development, it is possible to develop more accurate brain models to recreate American Footballers' head impacts. This method seems to be an excellent simulation tool to verify the helmet's ability to absorb energy and enable the researchers to have an insight into head kinematics and tissue-level injuries. The work is focused on head injuries in American Football as the sport becomes more popular across the globe. Additionally, a reference to the development and newest technology is presented. The review's proposed approach gathers studies presented within the last decade regarding the coupling of finite element brain models with helmets in standardised or on-field conditions. The synthesis of the existing state of the art may enhance the researchers to continue investigating the athlete's trauma and improve the protective gear technology to minimise head injuries. The authors presented numerous studies regarding concussions and the newest findings from the last decade, including Finite Element Head models (FEHm) with American Football helmet simulations. All the studies were searched through Google Scholar, Scopus and ResearchGate databases.

Optimisation of an elastomeric pre-buckled honeycomb helmet liner for advanced impact mitigation

“…Advances in computational modelling now offers a route to developing novel helmet liners that could exceed contemporary materials' performance [29][30][31]. Furthermore, the rise of additive manufacturing presents a viable route to achieving otherwise unobtainable material structures [32][33][34][35].…”

Numerical Reconstruction of Cyclist Impact Accidents: Can Helmets Protect the Head-Neck of Cyclists?

“…Many cyclists use a helmet while riding. At present, approaches for the evaluation of helmet protection performance mainly include the physical drop test [8][9][10][11][12][13] and computational simulation via finite element (FE) models [12][13][14][15][16]. Initially, the helmet drop test method was used, in which a helmeted headform was dropped onto a flat/declined surface with kinematic peaks (e.g., maximum linear acceleration at the headform's center of gravity) less than certain thresholds [12].…”

“…Figure13. Distribution of the risk of skull fracture in unhelmeted and helmeted cyclists in all analyzed car-cyclist impact cases.…”

Finite element evaluation of an American football helmet featuring liquid shock absorbers for protecting against concussive and subconcussive head impacts

“…In an effort to reduce the risk of head and brain injury, protective helmets are required to be worn at all levels of American football competition. Helmets have evolved dramatically since their first introduction to the sport (Levy et al, 2004;Viano and Halstead, 2012) and presently consist of a variety of shock absorbing technologies with differing mechanisms for energy absorption and force attenuation (Hoshizaki et al, 2014;Dymek et al, 2022). Notably, some modern technologies include viscoelastic foams, buckling beams and structures, gas chambers, and 3D printed lattices.…”