How Well Do Popular Bicycle Helmets Protect from Different Types of Head Injury?

Bicycle helmet Bicycle helmet testing Bicycle protective safety Brain injury prevention Brain injury risk Injury biomechanics Safety rating

Journal

Annals of biomedical engineering
ISSN: 1573-9686
Titre abrégé: Ann Biomed Eng
Pays: United States
ID NLM: 0361512

Informations de publication

Date de publication:
19 Sep 2024
Historique:
received: 13 02 2024
accepted: 25 07 2024
medline: 19 9 2024
pubmed: 19 9 2024
entrez: 18 9 2024
Statut: aheadofprint

Résumé

Bicycle helmets are designed to protect against skull fractures and associated focal brain injuries, driven by helmet standards. Another type of head injury seen in injured cyclists is diffuse brain injuries, but little is known about the protection provided by bicycle helmets against these injuries. Here, we examine the performance of modern bicycle helmets in preventing diffuse injuries and skull fractures under impact conditions that represent a range of real-world incidents. We also investigate the effects of helmet technology, price, and mass on protection against these pathologies. 30 most popular helmets among UK cyclists were purchased within 9.99-135.00 GBP price range. Helmets were tested under oblique impacts onto a 45° anvil at 6.5 m/s impact speed and four locations, front, rear, side, and front-side. A new headform, which better represents the average human head's mass, moments of inertia and coefficient of friction than any other available headforms, was used. We determined peak linear acceleration (PLA), peak rotational acceleration (PRA), peak rotational velocity (PRV), and BrIC. We also determined the risk of skull fractures based on PLA (linear risk), risk of diffuse brain injuries based on BrIC (rotational risk), and their mean (overall risk). Our results show large variation in head kinematics: PLA (80-213 g), PRV (8.5-29.9 rad/s), PRA (1.6-9.7 krad/s

Identifiants

pubmed: 39294466
doi: 10.1007/s10439-024-03589-8
pii: 10.1007/s10439-024-03589-8
doi:

Types de publication

Journal Article

Langues

eng

Sous-ensembles de citation

IM

Subventions

Organisme : Royal Academy of Engineering (UK)
ID : RCSRF2324-17-19
Organisme : Road Safety Trust (UK)
ID : 253_0_21

Informations de copyright

© 2024. The Author(s).

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Auteurs

C E Baker (CE)

HEAD Lab, Dyson School of Design Engineering, Imperial College London, London, SW7 2AZ, UK. c.baker17@imperial.ac.uk.

X Yu (X)

HEAD Lab, Dyson School of Design Engineering, Imperial College London, London, SW7 2AZ, UK.
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, S10 2TN, UK.

B Lovell (B)

HEAD Lab, Dyson School of Design Engineering, Imperial College London, London, SW7 2AZ, UK.

R Tan (R)

HEAD Lab, Dyson School of Design Engineering, Imperial College London, London, SW7 2AZ, UK.

S Patel (S)

HEAD Lab, Dyson School of Design Engineering, Imperial College London, London, SW7 2AZ, UK.

M Ghajari (M)

HEAD Lab, Dyson School of Design Engineering, Imperial College London, London, SW7 2AZ, UK.

Classifications MeSH