The Effect of Foam Material on the Acceleration of the Head Upon Impact

The Authors

Kyle Zabel

Dually enrolled student at Clintondale High school and the Macomb Mathematics Science Technology Center. I plan on going to college for a degree in engineering

Nick Russell

I attend Clintondale High School and Macomb Mathematics Science Technology Center. I will graduate from a four year university with a business or engineering degree.

Problem

We plan to determine which combination of foam materials will absorb the most force of an impact. To determine this, the acceleration of the head caused by impact will be measured and compared to values of other materials.

Hypothesis

For this experiment, we believe that the combination of expanded polypropylene foam (EPP) and sorbothane will yield the smallest acceleration of the inside of the helmet. EPP is a hard foam that will be the first layer in the helmet, and will absorb most of the impact force. Sorbothane is a softer foam material, like memory foam, that will absorb the left over forces from the first layer of the helmet.

Motivation

Both of us are sports fans, and we both play multiple sports. Currently, a major issue in sports is concussions and brain injuries. There have been severe injuries and even deaths involved with sports-caused head injuries. There is already plenty of research in this field, and we would like to contribute to this by attempting to construct a better helmet design.

Sources

The best sources for finding articles and research information on our experiment were National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), Hindawi, Michigan eLibrary (MeL), and Google Scholar.