Validation and Application of a Methodology to Calculate Head Accelerations and Neck Loading in Soccer Ball Impacts

Abstract

The Engineering Meetings Board has approved this paper for publication. It has successfully completed SAE's peer review process under the supervision of the session organizer. This process requires a minimum of three (3) reviews by industry experts. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of SAE.

Head and Neck Loading in Everyday and Vigorous Activities

“…11,12,15 Twenty (20) human volunteer subjects participated in the study, all of whom were employees of Biodynamic Research Corporation. Volunteers were selected to obtain a representative sample of the general population, and included twelve (12) men and eight (8) women spanning a wide range of ages (26-58 years, mean 44 years), heights (150-191 cm, mean 172 cm), and weights (54-99 kg, mean 80 kg). By body mass index (BMI), six (6) subjects were normal (BMI = 20.6-24.7), ten (10) subjects were overweight (BMI = 25.0-29.6), and four (4) subjects were obese (BMI = 30.1-35.6).…”

“…The entire approach was validated by performing matched soccer ball impact tests on the Hybrid III dummy and comparing calculated head accelerations and neck loads to experimental measurements. 12 Several head and neck injury criteria were calculated. The Head Injury Criterion (HIC) was calculated as …”

Kinetics of the cervical spine in pediatric and adult volunteers during low speed frontal impacts

“…In human subjects in simulated crashes, however, cervical spine reaction forces and moments cannot be measured directly. To address this limitation, researchers have reported methods for calculating loads and moments at the upper cervical spine in adult human volunteers and post mortem human subjects (PMHS) by transforming accelerations measured externally on the head to the center of gravity of the head using standard dynamics equations (Mertz and Patrick, 1967;Ewing and Thomas, 1973;Sundararajan et al, 2004;Funk et al, 2009). Using these approaches, adult head and neck forces and moments have been reported in low-speed rear impacts (Howard et al, 1998;Ono et al, 1997;Vijayakumar et al, 2006) and frontal loading at various speeds (Lopez-Valdes et al, 2010a;Wismans et al, 1986).…”

Kinematics and Kinetics of Vigorous Head Shaking

“…The methodology for calculating moments at C7-T1 was more complex than our previously published methodology for calculating forces at the occipital condyles 22 because the location of the center of gravity of the head and neck relative to C7-T1 changed as the neck flexed and extended.…”

“…We previously published a detailed description and validation of this methodology. 22 Relevant anatomical locations were identified from landmarks that were located precisely on scaled images in which lateral head radiographs and photographs of each volunteer were superimposed ( Figure 3). The coordinate system of the head was defined using the top of the external auditory meatus (in radiographs) or the tragus (in photographs) as the origin.…”