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Cited by 19Automotive and Human Injury BiomechanicsTraumatic Brain Injury ResearchSports Dynamics and Biomechanics

Nano-Composite Foam Sensor System in Football Helmets

Merrell, A. Jake, Christensen, William F., Seeley, Matthew K., Bowden, Anton E., Fullwood, David T.·2017·Annals of Biomedical Engineering
DOI 10.1007/s10439-017-1910-9
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Abstract

American football has both the highest rate of concussion incidences as well as the highest number of concussions of all contact sports due to both the number of athletes and nature of the sport. Recent research has linked concussions with long term health complications such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy and early onset Alzheimer's. Understanding the mechanical characteristics of concussive impacts is critical to help protect athletes from these debilitating diseases and is now possible using helmet-based sensor systems. To date, real time on-field measurement of head impacts has been almost exclusively measured by devices that rely on accelerometers or gyroscopes attached to the player's helmet, or embedded in a mouth guard. These systems monitor motion of the head or helmet, but do not directly measure impact energy. This paper evaluates the accuracy of a novel, multifunctional foam-based sensor that replaces a portion of the helmet foam to measure impact. All modified helmets were tested using a National Operating Committee Standards for Athletic Equipment-style drop tower with a total of 24 drop tests (4 locations with 6 impact energies). The impacts were evaluated using a headform, instrumented with a tri-axial accelerometer, mounted to a Hybrid III neck assembly. The resultant accelerations were evaluated for both the peak acceleration and the severity indices. These data were then compared to the voltage response from multiple Nano Composite Foam sensors located throughout the helmet. The foam sensor system proved to be accurate in measuring both the HIC and Gadd severity index, as well as peak acceleration while also providing additional details that were previously difficult to obtain, such as impact energy.

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Crossref · 10.1007/s10439-017-1910-9

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47 of 47 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

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  • Additional benefits of wearable sensors in the field setting include their applicability in environments where rapid medical care is needed and often not readily available, for example, at the scene of accidents, in military settings, athletics and in resource-constrained environments.

    “Additional benefits of wearable sensors in the field setting include their applicability in environments where rapid medical care is needed and often not readily available, for example, at the scene of accidents, in military settings, athletics and in resource-constrained environments (Figure 2) [36,138-140].”

    From Wearables and the Medical Revolution (2018) · cites this paper as [138]

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Authors
Merrell, A. J., Christensen, W. F., Seeley, M. K., Bowden, A. E., & Fullwood, D. T.
Affiliations
Brigham Young University (US)
Corresponding author
Merrell, A. Jake
ORCID
Venue
Annals of Biomedical Engineering
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2017-09-07
Volume
45
Issue
12
Pages
2742-2749
ISSN
  • 0090-6964 (ISSN-L)
  • 1573-9686
DOI
10.1007/s10439-017-1910-9
OpenAlex
W2754971933
Cited by
19
References
47
Citations by year
2026: 2 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 1 · 2018: 4
FWCI
1.82
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
www.springer.com/tdm (unspecified)
Locations
  • Annals of Biomedical Engineering (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Funders
National Science Foundation (CMMI-1538447, IPP-1549719)
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Pulmonary and Respiratory Medicine › Automotive and Human Injury Biomechanics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Epidemiology › Traumatic Brain Injury Research
  • Physical Sciences › Engineering › Biomedical Engineering › Sports Dynamics and Biomechanics
Keywords
football helmets, concussion, impact energy, HIC, peak acceleration, chronic traumatic encephalopathy
MeSH terms
Acceleration, Conductometry, Equipment Design, Football, Head Protective Devices, Humans, Polyurethanes, Sensitivity and Specificity, Transducers, Pressure, Reproducibility of Results, Equipment Failure Analysis, Sports Equipment, Nanotechnology, Nanocomposites, Accelerometry

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Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

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