Evaluation of Open Face Helmet Head Foam to Investigate Critical Injury Location

According to medical surveys, bike riders are more at risk of road accidents than other modes of transportation. Among injuries sustained by a bike rider, head injuries are more frequent and are a major cause of fatality. Medical research showed that about 60% of the injuries in an accident are likely to the head. This causes skull fracture or brain damage due to high acceleration upon impact. Also, several research showed that the use of helmets decreases the fatality rate due to head injury by half. This research investigates the impact analysis of realistic open-face helmet head foam (OFHHF) at different locations. The helmet has an expanded polypropylene (EPP) liner and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) shell. First, the numerical modeling of a simple helmet head foam with ABS and EPP was modeled in design modeler ANSYS, analyzed in explicit dynamics ANSYS using an autodyn solver, and validated with available published work. Then the analysis of realistic OFHH at a velocity of 7.5 ms was carried out as per European safety standard ECE 22.05. The OFHHF was analyzed at four different locations, i.e. top, front, rear, and side locations using a flat anvil that mimics a hard surface, such as road or pavement. OFHHF acceleration results at each location were calculated using ANSYS Explicit dynamics (Autodyn Solver) and compared to the 275g limit in ECE 22.05 standard. The impact investigation of OFHHF results showed that there was a higher acceleration at the top and side locations. Thus, the impact of OFHHF on top and side locations is critical to human head injury.