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Engineering Advancements in Helmet Design for

Use In Contact Sports
Andrew C. Horowitz

One of the largest problems facing athletes in all levels of contact sports such
as football and ice hockey is that of concussions, also known as mild traumatic brain
injuries (mTBIs). Each year in the United States alone it has been estimated that
there are nearly 300,000 cases of contact sports related mTBIs
1
. Although this
statistic includes all levels of athletics, ranging from high school sports to the
collegiate and professional levels, this number is still staggering. In recent years, it
has been shown that in addition to the immediate effects such as headaches and
nausea, concussions in fact may have several long-term consequences on youth and
adult athletes alike. These long-term effects have been found to include impaired
motor skills, increased forgetfulness, a decrease in memory ability, chronic
headaches or migraines, and an assortment of sleep issues
2
. One way in which the
prevalence of these injuries is being fought is through the use of newer helmet
technologies. Though research efforts of the past several years have been surely
been able to lower the numbers of mTBIs to quite a large extent, much more must be
done to create a helmet that best protects ones head during the high velocity
impacts that frequently occur in contact sports. During the past two years, several
new technologies have been developed and tested in order to further reduce the
shock absorbed by the head during sports collisions. Likewise, there have been many
recent advancements in creating systems that are more easily to identify when a
concussion may have occurred. While these research efforts do surely show
promising results, more research certainly needs to be performed in order to most
effectively reduce the numbers of mTBIs faced by athletes in the future.

Introduction
The term concussion refers to a mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) typically caused
by a sudden movement, bump, or jolt to the head. These injuries are often suffered by
athletes of contact sports such as ice hockey or football and may lead to serious long-term
consequences. As a result many steps are being taken in order to reduce the number of
athletes particularly at the high school level and collegiate levels who experience
these head injuries. One of the main ways this is being achieved is through the education of
sports coaches and athletes on how to not only reduce injuries through safer playing

1
Hauser, John & Meyer, David G (2013). Modeling and exploration of an active helmet design. 2013 American
Control Conference. 728-733. Retrieved at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/servlet/opac?punumber=1000030
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http://www.cdc.gov/concussion/pdf/facts_about_concussion_tbi-a.pdf
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practices, but also on how to identify the symptoms of a concussion and what steps should
be taken after one is suspected.
However, another approach to this problem has been undertaken by the actual
manufacturers of the protective helmets themselves. Over the course of the past several
years, there have been many advances in helmet technologies that have been shown to
statistically reduce the number of mTBIs in their wearers as compared to older models.
These advances hope to both prevent concussions from occurring in the first place, and to
help aid in the identification of mTBIs as close to the moment of impact as possible.
Although the literature being examined in this review will deal primarily with advances in
football helmets, the technologies being researched and examined do have several
applications in both helmets for other sports such as ice hockey and in other areas of
interest such as the military.

Preventative Advancements
Although the largest percentage of football-related injuries are still, to this day head-
related, the amount of athletes suffering from both head and cervical spine related fatalities
has drastically reduced since the creation of the NOCSAE helmet standard in 1978. The
NOCSAE, which stands for the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic
Equipment, was created as a non-profit organization in 1969 as a way to reduce head and
neck injuries in contact sports, primarily football. In light of the 32 head-injury related
fatalities that had occurred the previous year in the sport of football
3
, the NOCSAE directed
their initial funds where it was deemed most necessary developing a standard for football
helmets. Through many research studies, the NOCSAE was able to develop a set of
standards by which all football helmets were required to conform to. To this day, football
helmets at all levels are required to meet their standard, which according to their official
website simply states that a helmet must provide a substantial level of protection for
serious head injuries, including concussions. However, they also include within their
standard definition that no helmets can prevent all concussions, and that future research is

3
History and Purpose of the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment
http://nocsae.org/about-nocsae/history-and-purpose/
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needed to improve and, identify criteria that could be used in a concussion specific helmet
standard.

Nearly all football helmets worn by athletes today utilize similar designs, and are by
definition what may be considered passive in their design. That is, helmets being worn
today in football contain no moving parts or features that are able to dynamically adjust
throughout an athletic event based upon any sort of feedback. Although some literature,
such as Meyer and Hausers 2013 Modeling and Exploration of an Active Helmet Design
do propose designs for so-called active helmets with the ability to adjust based on
piezoelectric feedback systems, they are still in the earliest of design stages
4
. Thus, for the
purpose of this literature review all helmet research that will be examined will be based
upon technologies that currently exist, and whose effectiveness in actually preventing
mTBIs can be tested. And so, nearly all contact sport helmets used today follow the same
basic structure: there is a hard plastic shell on the outside of the helmet along with some
sort of padding layer used to insulate the forces felt by the wearer during high impact
collisions. There is also a facemask in front of the athletes face, which is not nearly as
effective preventing impact forces as the rest of the helmet
5
.
Consequentially, many of the advancements in helmet design have come in the form
of improving the main protecting component the padding layer that sits between the
wearers head and the plastic shell, which is where contact primarily occurs. Though
traditional helmet designs utilize a foam padding to separate the athletes head from the
plastic shell and likewise point of impact, helmets worn today are nearly almost all
improved. Instead of containing just foam, many newer helmets today contain pneumatic
cushions, or bladders, that are able to be inflated to various pressures depending on the
size of the wearers head (Meyer & Hauser 2013). The composition of these bladders may
vary from helmet to helmet, and in fact the effectiveness of each at combatting mTBIs has
been the subject of much debate since the advent of the very first helmet. Several studies
have attempted to rate nearly every model of helmets overall effectiveness at preventing

4
Hauser, John & Meyer, David G (2013). Modeling and exploration of an active helmet design. 2013 American
Control Conference. 728-733. Retrieved at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/servlet/opac?punumber=1000030
5
Jadischke, Ron, Viano, David C., Dau, Nathan, King, Albert I., McCarthy, Joe (2013). On the accuracy of the
Head Impact Telemetry (HIT) System used in football helmets. Journal of Biomechanics. 46. 2310 2315.
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head injuries. However, each time the validity of these studies are called into account due
to both a lack of an industry standard when it comes to measuring actual impacts that
athletes face and the complexity of even diagnosing when an mTBI has occurred in the first
place. This issue will be reexamined later on in this review. However, for the purposes of
this section, two different helmets padding technologies will be examined for their
effectiveness in reducing the likelihood of concussions from occurring.
One of the most popular helmets worn today is the Schutt Ion 4D, which was first
released in 2010. This helmet, which boasts a four of five star rating from an independent
Virginia Tech helmet rating system, focused on several areas of improvement over
traditional helmets. First, the standard expanded polypropylene (EPP) foam in this helmet
was replaced with a new type of material called Thermoplastic Urethane (TPU)
6
. Some of
the properties that make this a more ideal shock absorber than traditional EPP foams is
that fact that with increased temperatures such as those greater that 115F which may be
experienced in game conditions the mechanical properties of this material do not change at
all. TPU is far more durable than traditional foam and less prone to the degradation faced
by EPP over time. It has also been claimed by the manufacturer, Schutt, that TPU is more
than 40% better than similar foams at shock absorption than materials such as EPP.
Though the metric by which this claim may be substantiated is somewhat unclear, this
nonetheless remains a great example of how engineering progress has been working to
solve a major health problem in contact sports. Consequently, this helmet is an excellent
example of how interdisciplinary research within areas such as polymer chemistry,
mechanical and chemical engineering are able to work together to create a product that is
effective at further reducing the amount of concussions experienced by athletes today.
The next helmet examined was the Xenith X1 football helmet, which also boasts a 4
of 5 star rating from the same Virginia Tech rating system. What makes this helmet so
much different than other football helmets is that instead of using standard foam padding
to absorb energy from an impact it actually contains many small shock absorbers. These
shock absorbers, which borrow engineering principles commonly utilized in the
automotive industry, are created from a polyurethane material similar to the Schutt TPU

6
Product specifications found on the manufacturers website at
http://www.schuttsports.com/aspx/Sport/ProductCatalog.aspx?id=787
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padding, and are each embedded within holes of a flexible bonnet. Each shock absorber is
fitted with a small attenuation chamber which contains a small hole to release air.
Essentially, when an impact occurs, air is released from these small chambers within the
absorbers, which is in turn able to reduce the impact experienced on the actual head of the
wearer.
During normal football gameplay (low impact situations) air is able to flow
smoothly in and out of the chambers with little resistance. However, during high impact
situations the air becomes turbulent and more rigid, thus absorbing more impact energy.
This idea may be best compared to that of a bicycle pump. While pumping a bicycle tire
slowly, it is relatively easy to fill the tire with air. However, when the pump is pressed
down very quickly, one is met with a great amount of resistance, and the pump becomes
very rigid. Though more data is certainly needed to further substantiate the claims that the
shock absorbers in this system are working the specific way that they claim to be, these
helmets do consistently perform in independent tests as one of the most effective at
fighting head injuries
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. Whether or not these are able to outperform helmets with newer
padding technologies such as the Schutt Ion 4D is still up in the air.
The biggest flaw in these two helmet designs that I was able to find while
researching them was the incredibly limited availability of testing data provided by the
manufacturers. Although I was able to find some quantitative data supporting Schutt and
Xeniths claims in literature such as the findings at Virginia Tech
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, it was very difficult to
find substantial scientific literature within the engineering discipline that could further
support the manufacturers claims regarding their specific materials and their properties
related to high impact collisions. Though I understand that many of the technologies
involved in products such as helmets are important trade secrets, the lack of transparency
amongst helmet manufacturers is certain a major problem facing the research community
in this sector today. More information needs to be shared with the scientific community
regarding the composition of the padding materials used by some of the major

7
Maw, S., Lun, V., Clarke, A. (2012). The influence of helmet size and shape on peak linear decelerations when
impacting crash pads. Procedia Engineering. 34 (12) 819 824.
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Rowson, Steven & Duma, Stefan F. (2012). The Virginia Tech Response. Annals of Biomedical Engineering,
Vol. 40, No. 12, December 2012 pp. 25122518.
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manufacturers such as Xenith and Schutt so that they can be independently tested as
compared to the traditional foam material used in helmets, expanded polypropylene (EPP).


Concussion Identification Systems
Moreover, one of the largest holes in the scientific literature regarding advances in
helmet design is the lack of a universal testing standard for them. This idea was explored in
great length in the articles On the accuracy of the Head Impact Telemetry (HIT) System
used in football helmets (Jadischke, R et. al 2013) and Evaluation of a flexible force senor
for measurement in helmet foam impact performance (Ouckama, R. & Pearsall, D. J. 2010).
In each of these articles, researchers attempted to evaluate preexisting methods for
measuring head impacts such as Riddells HITS system. In the case of the second article, a
newer system design for use in helmets was proposed that would use sensors to capture
more information than just translational head motion when identifying concussions.
One of the most widely used systems for measuring head impacts in football helmets
today is Riddells Head Impact Telemetry System, commonly known as HITS. Created in
2003, HITS is comprehensive multi-faceted system in which head impacts during athletic
events are able to measured as they occur. The HIT system includes three primary
components : the player unit, which contains five point built-in accelerometers actually
inside of the helmets (these are used to determine both the linear and angular
accelerations experienced by the wearer), a handheld alert monitor to work in conjunction
with the player unit, and management software where data can be further analyzed post-
gameplay. The way this system works is by determining when impacts greater than 100 g
have occurred, and when they do by alerting the coach or trainer on the sideline.
Furthermore, the system gauges when impacts above, below, and at a certain threshold
(generally 100g, maybe 85 g) occur, and electronically registers where on the helmet the
occurred. Highly advanced at the time of creation, this was the very first system of its kind
and was almost immediately adopted by teams at every level of play, from high school
teams to the professionals. The problem with this system however is that it does not take
several necessary factors other than translational head motion into account when
determining whether or not an mTBI has occurred.
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Furthermore, it was found in a 2013 paper that the results of HITS are not in fact
always even accurate themselves. In the paper On the accuracy of the HIT System used in
football helmets independent researchers from Wayne State University found huge
inaccuracies from each specific impact to impact
9
. Although over an average amount of
impacts the total impact experienced by a player tends to even out, in a system where it
only takes one data point to permanently cause damage to a player, this is not okay. A
staggering statistic found by researchers was that an impact recorded by HIT as 100 g will
actually be <85 g or >115g 55% of the time. This may lead to not only non-concussed
players being forced to sit out when they really dont need to, but may also lead to many
concussions being missed! Clearly detection systems are missing something.
One idea proposed that has the potential to replace the HIT System has its roots in
the first section of Ouckama and Pearsalls 2010 paper Evaluation of a flexible force sensor
for measurement of helmet foam impact performance. Within this paper, these two
researchers from McGill University proposed that the FEA models used to identify head
injuries needed to be updated
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to incorporate more knowledge of the neurobiological
structures. Next, they went on in this paper to test the effectiveness of various density EPP
foams at absorbing forces during high impact collisions using 13 Flexiforce sensors
placed in a 5 x 5 cm array. Although they acknowledged that lateral and angular
accelerations as measured in preexisting systems such as HITS do provide important
information when diagnosing head injuries, Ouckama and Pearsall also proposed the idea
that global head acceleration criterion measures alone are poor indicators of
neurocognitive injuries. Though they did not actually propose a new model for identifying
these injuries, they suggested that a better understanding of the dynamics at the actual
small region of contact would be necessary for future systems. This suggests that although
they are aware that there are many more factors involved in a collision that simply one
lateral movement, that more research needs to be done to really figure out what causes
these traumas in the first place. Finally, their research does substantiate the claim that

9
Jadischke, Ron, Viano, David C., Dau, Nathan, King, Albert I., McCarthy, Joe (2013). On the accuracy of the
Head Impact Telemetry (HIT) System used in football helmets. Journal of Biomechanics. 46 (2013) 2310
2315.
10
Ouckama, Ryan, & Pearsall, David J. (2010). Evaluation of a flexible force sensor for measurement of
helmet foam impact performance. Journal of Biomechanics. 44 (2011) 904 909.

8
higher density newer foams with greater surface areas may work better at absorbing
energy and thus lessen blows to the head.

Conclusion / Future of Helmet Design
Clearly, the future of helmet design still has a lot of room for progress. Although
much advancement has occurred already in the development of energy absorbing padding
systems, researchers are far from finding the most effective solution at preventing
concussions from occurring at all. In order to design a helmet that can more likely reduce
traumatic head injuries that are so common in sports such as football and hockey, more
needs to be understood from a neurobiological standpoint about what is actually
happening when a concussion occurs. Once the intricate nature of head impacts are able to
be more understood, it will be easier to design systems that can help stop them from
occurring.
When an impact occurs it is known now that many factors come into play as to
whether or not a concussion will occur. Sure, the translational motion of the actual
opposing player is important if a player is hit with 120 g of force they are sure to stop in
their tracks. However, it is not currently understood very well at all how important where
they are hit has to do with the likelihood of an mTBI ensuing. For example, if a player is hit
with 120 g of force straight on they may be fine afterwards. However, if that same motion
was a lateral force impact to the thin squamous temporal bone, that may in turn induce
transient focal cranial deformations that in turn could propagate stress waves to the
underlying cortex leading to any sort of traumatic head injury
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. In other words, the loading
force distribution of impacts, the underlying cranial and neurobiological structures, and
many more factors must be continued to be researched and understood in regards to their
roles in a concussion in order to create the most effective ways at preventing concussions
in helmets.
In order to advance helmet research to the next level, there are several steps that
must be taken. Because this topic is interdisciplinary by nature, there are quite a few
different areas of research that this must occur within. In order to more accurately evaluate

11
Ouckama, Ryan, & Pearsall, David J. (2010). Evaluation of a flexible force sensor for measurement of
helmet foam impact performance. Journal of Biomechanics. 44 (2011) 904 909.

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the effectiveness of helmets at preventing concussions, biologically speaking much more
research needs to be done into understanding just what specifically is occurring when a
patient is concussed and which areas of the head should require more protection than
others. Next, a new industry standard needs to be created and put into place to evaluate the
claims of manufacturers such as Riddell, Xenith, and Schutt. There needs to be some
quantitative measure by which any helmets impact absorption can be measured and
compared to others. Likewise, a new sensor system needs to be created for use during
practices and gameplay that is more accurate than the HIT system, possibly one that simple
utilizes newer technologies than that which was available in 2003 with HITS was released
so as to increase the accuracy of each measurement. Finally, new active helmet designs
such as that which was proposed by Meyer and Hauser show lots of potential in reshaping
the way future helmets will be able to transfer high impact collisions energy away from the
head of the athlete.