Mid Sweden University

Acquiring knowledge on head traumas is useful since they represent a dangerous outcome of traumatic events. Injury criteria aim to link clinical evidence of injury with experimentally measurable physical quantities, however, recent studies based on numerical methods have pointed out that also other factors could be key contributors to brain injury probability and severity. Providing an experimental measure of more advanced injury criteria is challenging, and only few research groups have started to address the problem. Starting from an existing and validated biofidelic dummy head, advances in the mechanical components and sensors embedded inside the model have been carried out, aiming to improve both bio-fidelity and to address the measure of more advanced criteria. After realizing the prototype, preliminary drop tests were performed impacting the helmeted head over an anvil. Data collected showed increase of injury criteria values with the impact force. Results proved the possibility of using the surrogate for investigating simple and advanced injury criteria, and future works will aim to set test parameters to levels compatible with helmet standards.