Head Impacts in Hockey and Youth Football: Biomechanical Response and Helmet Padding Characteristics

The research presented herein is a combination of work done in two distinct subcategories of sport related head injury research. The body of work is aimed at increasing the understanding of head impact biomechanics across a broad spectrum of impact scenarios as well as the ability of helmets to affect head impact biomechanics over time. The first study utilizes in situ testing of controlled impacts of an instrumented head form to more fully characterize head accelerations resulting from impacts to the ice, board, and glass surfaces present in an ice hockey rink. The full characterization of head impacts across a spectrum of loading conditions and impact surfaces gives researchers insight into head impact tolerance and head protection capabilities and limitations in ice hockey. The second study details the development of a method to impact helmet pads for repeated loading studies based on published head impact exposure data. The third study uses this newly developed methodology to test the effects of a season of impacts on the energy absorbing properties of three different helmet padding technologies. The body of work is aimed at increasing understanding of head impact and concussion and the ability of existing helmet technologies to prevent these injuries with a goal of reducing the occurrence of injury.