Grant: Alliance Grants

TBI is a significant issue for military personnel. Military helmets serve as the primary source of protection against most types of head exposures including both ballistic and blunt impacts and have shown high efficacy in reducing the incidence of focal injuries such as skull fractures and severe traumatic brain injuries (TBI). However their efficacy in preventing mTBIs or concussions is still under question. Military helmets are commonly assessed using a drop tower impact system, where head motion is limited to one direction and acceleration is monitored with a uniaxial accelerometer. However, current testing methods, do not consider, accelerative loading, where the point of impact or loading is not the head and loading is transferred through the cervical spine. The main objective of this research is to develop a testing methodology and apparatus to simulate accelerative loading to the head, specifically accelerative loading scenarios of interest to DRDC which include loading due to firearm discharge to the shoulder, parachute rapid deacceleration, and falls onto shoulders. The apparatus will likely utilize a commercially available robotic arm capable of large accelerations modified to include attachments for a full human surrogate model, a half human surrogate model (torso, neck, upper limbs, and a separated head and neck model. The designed testing platform will be capable of rapidly moving a human model at various acceleration magnitudes and directions to reconstruct the aforementioned loading scenarios. The developed testing method will measure both linear and rotational kinematics in addition to intracranial pressure to assess the potential likelihood of mTBI under the aforementioned accelerative loading scenarios. To achieve this goal the BIPED, a human surrogate head model developed by DRDC and capable of measuring intracranial pressures will be incorporated into the testing procedure.