Helmet Design Absorbs Shock in a New Way
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Published: October 27, 2007
(Page 2 of 2)
Football helmets present the technological challenge of protecting against all manner of blows to the head and also doing so thousands of times. (Bicycle helmets, by contrast, are designed to withstand just one major, accidental impact.) Optimally, a helmet’s interior must be forgiving enough to cushion against a routine impact while also sturdy enough to withstand a potentially lethal one — each level of force requires a different response from the material.
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To earn certification, a helmet is impact-tested at dozens of forces and angles, with the energy it still allows to reach the skull measured by what is called severity index. The helmet must always score at 1,200 or below on the severity index because that is the zone that causes fractured skulls, the injury whose prevention historically has been emphasized — quite successfully — in football. Concussions become likely at a severity index of about 300; the certification agency has feared demanding that level of protection because of potential sacrifices it might mean at higher levels.
During its certification test this month, the Xenith helmet scored in the 200’s in several key locations and averaged about 340, scores generally lower than those attained by today’s helmet designs. The certification agency’s executive director, Mike Oliver, strongly cautioned against comparing test scores because differences are not as meaningful as they appear.
“Concussion is the big elephant in the room right now when it comes to helmets, and I’m cautiously optimistic at how low these numbers are,” Oliver said. “But you can test as much as you want, and we won’t really know until it’s tested in the field and we see how it performs.”
Ferrara, 34, shared Oliver’s caution and said that no helmet could prevent concussion — all it could do is decrease the chance for one. “You can’t put a seat belt on the brain,” he said.
In general, only about 20 percent of helmets in use by high schools at any one time are less than one year old; a vast majority are reconditioned every one to three years, as budgets permit. Reconditioned helmets are cleaned, receive new bolts and undergo random drop testing to the certification agency’s 1,200 severity-index standard. But the process does little to address the foam padding that degrades over time and provides less protection against the lower-level impacts that cause concussion, according to Dave Halstead, the agency’s technical director.
Horror stories regarding use of deteriorated helmets are not uncommon. Six years ago, Max Conradt, a high school player in Yachats, Ore., was wearing a 20-year-old helmet when he sustained hits that left him comatose for two months and permanently impaired. Halstead said he had seen helmets with padding replaced by athletic socks and with screw points exposed.
Beyond those rare cases, however, Halstead estimated that half of helmets in use at the high school level are either improperly reconditioned, have foam degradation or fit poorly. This leaves them susceptible to the lower-level forces that cause the majority of concussions, rather than the higher grades for which the agency tests. The certification agency does test hockey and lacrosse helmets at both high and low levels — an extra step that Halstead said his organization should strongly consider for football, as more data are collected on its effectiveness.
“There is concern that changing anything about the standards can affect the safety we’ve already attained,” Halstead said. “The unanswered questions are real. But the injuries we see because of concussions are also real, and are becoming more important.”
Ferrara said that internal tests on his helmet’s shock absorbers had shown no notable degradation after hundreds of hits. That, along with the helmet’s promising test scores, have left Cantu imagining uses for the technology beyond football.
“In the military, you have helmets for pilots and ground troops,” said Cantu, who has also advised the Department of Defense on soldiers’ concussions and other brain injuries. “There’s ice-hockey boards and auto-race barriers. Anything that’s protective in nature, that’s used to attenuate energy, could be improved markedly.”
Other companies are attempting to address football’s concussion quandary. Schutt developed a model called the DNA that uses a thermoplastic urethane liner to attenuate energy as well as foam-filled air bladders for fit.
Simbex, a company based in Lebanon, N.H., has developed a tiny accelerometer that fits inside helmet padding, measures sudden movements of the head and can wirelessly alert a sideline trainer. (Riddell now markets a $1,000 helmet with this technology built in.) While by no means foolproof, the device — now in use in eight colleges and four high schools — can help identify when players sustain a particularly dangerous hit but, wanting to stay on the field, attempt to hide it from medical personnel.
And SportSoft, based in Kirkland, Wash., makes tracking stickers similar to labels on grocery items so that equipment managers can better monitor each helmet’s age and reconditioning history.
Ferrara said he wanted his new shock-absorber helmet design to be only one of several lines of defense against concussions. Mindful that previous helmet improvements have occasionally led athletes to feel a false sense of security and take more risks, he said part of his rollout plan would be to emphasize to players and coaches proper, head-up tackling technique, so that the helmet sees fewer dangerous hits to begin with — as well as encouraging athletes to admit when they think they might have a concussion.
“The educational side of it is just as important, if not more important, as the helmet itself,” Ferrara said.