The Use of Decoupling Structures in Helmet Liners to Reduce Maximum Principal Brain Tissue Strain for Head Impacts

Abstract

The primary goal of the American football helmet has been protection of players against skull fractures and other traumatic brain injuries (TBI) [Cantu 2003, Benson 2009]. TBI can result from short, high magnitude linear impact events typical of when the head impacts a hard surface [Gilcrhist 2003, Doorly 2007]. The modern helmet, which has evolved and become well designed to mitigate TBI injuries, does not offer sufficient protection against injury such as concussion, and the incident rate remains high in sport [Broglio 2009, Rowson 2012]. Researchers speculate rotation of the head leads to shear strain on the brain tissue, which may be the underlying mechanism of injury leading to concussive type injuries [Gennarelli 1971, Ommaya 1974, Gennarelli 1982, Prange 2002, Gilcrhist 2003, Aare 2003, Zhang 2004, Takhounts 2008, Greenwald 2008, Meaney 2011]. This has led researchers to investigate new liner materials and technologies to improve helmet performance and include concussive injury risk protection by attempting to address rotational acceleration of the brain [Mills 2003, Benson 2009, Caserta 2011, Caccese 2013]. To improve current football helmet designs, technology must be shown to reduce the motion of the brain, resulting in lower magnitudes of dynamic response thus reducing maximum principal strain and the corresponding risk of injury [Margulies 1992, Zhang 2004, Mills 2003, Kleiven 2007, Yoganandan 2008 Caserta 2011, McAllister 2012, Caccese 2013, Post 2013, Fowler 2015, Post 2015a/b]. Recent research has studied the use of decoupling liner systems in addition to the existing liner technology, to address resultant rotational acceleration. However, none of this previous work has evaluated the results in terms of the relationship between brain motion, tissue strain, and injury risk reduction. This thesis hypothesises the use of decoupling strategies to reduce the dominant coordinate component of acceleration in order to decrease maximum principal strain values. The dominant component of acceleration, defined as the coordinate component with the highest contribution to the resultant acceleration for each impact, is a targetable design parameter for helmet innovation. The objective of this thesis was to demonstrate the effect liner strategies to reduce the dominant component of rotational acceleration to decrease maximum principal strain in American football helmets.