Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the potential of soft-shelled rugby headgear to reduce linear impact accelerations. A hybrid III head form instrumented with a 3-axis accelerometer was used to assess headgear performance on a drop test rig. Six headgear units were examined in this study: Canterbury Clothing Company (CCC) Ventilator, Kukri, 2nd Skull, N-Pro, and two Gamebreaker headgear units of different sizes (headgears 1–6, respectively). Drop heights were 238, 300, 610, and 912 mm with 5 orientations at each height (forehead, front boss, rear, rear boss, and side). Impact severity was quantified using peak linear acceleration (PLA) and head injury criterion (HIC). All headgear was tested in comparison to a no headgear condition (for all heights). Compared to the no headgear condition, all headgear significantly reduced PLA and HIC at 238 mm (16.2–45.3% PLA and 29.2–62.7% HIC reduction; P < 0.0005, ηp2 = 0.987–0.991). Headgear impact attenuation lowered significantly as the drop height increased (32.4–5.6% PLA and 50.9–11.7% HIC reduction at 912 mm). There were no significant differences in PLA or HIC reduction between headgear units 1–3. Post hoc testing indicated that headgear units 4–6 significantly outperformed headgear units 1–3 and additionally headgear units 5 and 6 significantly outperformed headgear 4 (P < 0.05). The lowest reduction PLA and HIC was for impacts rear orientation for headgear units 1–4 (3.3 ± 3.6%–11 ± 5.8%). In contrast, headgear units 5 and 6 significantly outperformed all other headgear in this orientation (P < 0.0005, ηp2 = 0.982–0.990). Side impacts showed the greatest reduction in PLA and HIC for all headgear. All headgear units tested demonstrated some degree of reduction in PLA and HIC from a linear impact; however, units 4–6 performed significantly better than headgear units 1–3.
Highlights
Rugby Union is a popular contact sport played by approximately 8.5 million people in over 121 countries worldwide [1]. e collisions inherent in the game can impart large forces and accelerations to the head during contact
Headgear unit 2 was formed from a light weight (≤45 kg/m3) ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) foam arranged in cells similar to headgear 1
Descriptive data for peak linear acceleration (PLA) and head injury criterion (HIC) along with percentage reductions in PLA and HIC can be found in Tables 2 and 3, respectively
Summary
Rugby Union is a popular contact sport played by approximately 8.5 million people in over 121 countries worldwide [1]. e collisions inherent in the game can impart large forces and accelerations to the head during contact. Given rugby’s high reported impact accelerations, players are at a much higher risk of injury compared to noncontact sports [9]. One of the most common injuries in rugby is concussion [10,11,12,13] with incidence rates ranging. Concussion-related injuries account for 25% of all days lost from rugby participation [13]. Increased attention on the negative effects of sports concussions and recent advances in technology have resulted in a number of innovative theoretical approaches being developed in order to analyse impacts in a sports context [22, 23]. Whyte et al (2019) provided a comprehensive review of impact testing for sports headgear and highlighted the need for experimental validation in all theoretical approaches [23].
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