A Biomechanical Evaluation of a Novel Airbag Bicycle Helmet Concept for Traumatic Brain Injury Mitigation.

Kwong Ming Tse,Daniel Holder

doi:10.3390/bioengineering8110173

Kwong Ming Tse, Daniel Holder

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/bioengineering8110173

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Abstract

In this study, a novel expandable bicycle helmet, which integrates an airbag system into the conventional helmet design, was proposed to explore the potential synergetic effect of an expandable airbag and a standard commuter-type EPS helmet. The traumatic brain injury mitigation performance of the proposed expandable helmet was evaluated against that of a typical traditional bicycle helmet. A series of dynamic impact simulations on both a helmeted headform and a representative human head with different configurations were carried out in accordance with the widely recognised international bicycle helmet test standards. The impact simulations were initially performed on a ballast headform for validation and benchmarking purposes, while the subsequent ones on a biofidelic human head model were used for assessing any potential intracranial injury. It was found that the proposed expandable helmet performed admirably better when compared to a conventional helmet design—showing improvements in impact energy attenuation, as well as kinematic and biometric injury risk reduction. More importantly, this expandable helmet concept, integrating the airbag system in the conventional design, offers adequate protection to the cyclist in the unlikely case of airbag deployment failure.

Highlights

With increasing public awareness for health reasons as well as government promotion, bicycling has become a popular nonmotorised form of transport globally
This study adopted an indirect validation approach in which the headform kinematic of the helmeted ballast headform impact was first validated before assessing the performance of the proposed expandable bicycle helmet, in terms of the unobtainable intracranial biomechanical responses, using a previously validated biofidelic head model [31]
To explore the synergetic effect of an expandable airbag and a standard commuter-type expanded polystyrene (EPS) helmet in the novel helmet design, a series of dynamic impact simulations were performed on a human head model equipped with the proposed novel expandable helmet, comprising the conventional EPS helmet and an airbag, before the helmet was evaluated for its efficacy in protecting the bicyclist’s head against traumatic brain injury (TBI)

Summary

Introduction

With increasing public awareness for health reasons as well as government promotion, bicycling has become a popular nonmotorised form of transport globally. Road traffic deaths among vulnerable cyclists are intolerably high [1]. The importance of bicycle helmets and their effectiveness in head injury mitigation has been documented in many case studies and research papers [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12]. Polymeric foams are the preferred material in absorption liners due to their strong localisation effects in compression and volumetric hardening characteristics. In severe cases, the energy-absorbing capability of the conventional liners is insufficient to negate serious brain injury or death [13]. Bicycle helmet absorption liner material is typically expanded polystyrene (EPS), with density ranging from 60–101 kg/m3 [14,15]

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