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Finite Element Model of a Deformable American Football Helmet Under Impact

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Abstract

Despite the use of helmets in American football, brain injuries are still prevalent. To reduce the burden of these injuries, novel impact mitigation systems are needed. The Vicis Zero1 (VZ1) American football helmet is unique in its use of multi-directional buckling structures sandwiched between a deformable outer shell and a stiff inner shell. The objective of this study was to develop a model of the VZ1 and to assess this unique characteristic for its role in mitigating head kinematics. The VZ1 model was developed using a bottom-up framework that emphasized material testing, constitutive model calibration, and component-level validation. Over 50 experimental tests were simulated to validate the VZ1 model. CORrelation and Analysis (CORA) was used to quantify the similarity between experimental and model head kinematics, neck forces, and impactor accelerations and forces. The VZ1 model demonstrated good correlation with an overall mean CORA score of 0.86. A parametric analysis on helmet compliance revealed that the outer shell and column stiffness influenced translational head kinematics more than rotational. For the material parameters investigated, head linear acceleration ranged from 80 to 220 g, whereas angular velocity ranged from 37 to 40 rad/s. This helmet model is open-source and serves as an in silico design platform for helmet innovation.

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Acknowledgments

The research presented in this paper was made possible by a Grant from Football Research, Inc. (FRI). The views expressed are solely those of the authors and do not represent those of FRI or any of their affiliates or funding sources. The authors would like to thank our collaborators in the “Engineering Roadmap: Numerical Crowdsourcing Project” for their support and feedback of this work (Teams from Wake Forest University, University of Waterloo, and KTH Royal Institute of Technology). The authors also acknowledge the Virginia Tech Helmet Lab and BioKinetics and Associates, Ltd. for generating the pendulum and linear impactor test data. Finally, the authors would like to thank Dr. Lee Gabler, Dr. Anne Bailey, and Dr. Wei Zeng for their feedback.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Applied Biomechanics, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Virginia, 4040 Lewis and Clark Dr., Charlottesville, VA, 229011, USA

    J. Sebastian Giudice, Adrian Caudillo, Sayak Mukherjee, Kevin Kong, Richard Kent & Matthew B. Panzer

  2. Biomechanics Consulting and Research (Biocore), LLC, Charlottesville, VA, USA

    Gwansik Park & Richard Kent

Authors
  1. J. Sebastian Giudice
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  2. Adrian Caudillo
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  3. Sayak Mukherjee
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  4. Kevin Kong
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  5. Gwansik Park
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  6. Richard Kent
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  7. Matthew B. Panzer
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Correspondence to Matthew B. Panzer.

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Associate Editor Joel Stitzel oversaw the review of this article.

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Giudice, J.S., Caudillo, A., Mukherjee, S. et al. Finite Element Model of a Deformable American Football Helmet Under Impact. Ann Biomed Eng 48, 1524–1539 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10439-020-02472-6

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