Taking a Hit: Soccer Helmets Undergo Safety Test at Rowan University
Taking a Hit: Soccer Helmets Undergo Safety Test at Rowan University
April 22, 2005
All is not safe on the soccer fields of America.
Swarms of kids race across the grass each year, building their team skills, furthering their physical fitness and polishing their athletic skills ? and getting hit in the head with a ball or crashing into each other, goal posts or the ground.
Teams of Rowan University College of Engineering students working under the direction of mechanical engineering professors Drs. John Chen and Krishan Bhatia are exploring ways to keep those players safe.
From 1990 to 1999, there were an estimated 86,697 head injuries from soccer -- 21,715 of them concussions -- that landed players in American emergency rooms, according to the article ?Head Injuries Presenting to Emergency Department in the United States from 1990 to 1999 for Ice Hockey, Soccer, and Football,? in the March 2004 issue of ?Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine.? Those statistics made soccer a high-risk sport for concussions, according to author J. Scott Delaney. The American Academy of Pediatrics, he noted, defines soccer as a contact/collision sport, just as it does football and ice hockey.
This semester, 40 Rowan Engineering freshmen in the multidisciplinary Freshman Engineering Clinic are testing the effectiveness of four types of soccer helmets and also measuring the impact of ?hits? on an unprotected head. Using a ball-pitching machine, the students are firing soccer balls at 35 to 50 miles an hour at a crash test dummy. In addition, they have constructed tests that simulate the impact of the dummy in a collision with a goal post, the ground and another protected or unprotected head.
As various objects hit the head of the dummy ? the size of a small female designed to simulate a teenager ? the students are videotaping the impact with a high-speed camera that captures 500 frames per second. They also are monitoring the severity of the impact (front to back, side to side, and top to bottom) on the head and neck using a set of accelerometers embedded in the dummy?s head that measures the acceleration experienced in the various types of accidents.
?We?re trying to study whether the helmets actually reduce injury or not. Besides possible head and neck injury reduction, our students are also studying the effect these helmets have on a player?s ability to accurately head a ball as well as the long-term durability of these helmets after repeated impacts,? Bhatia said.
Anthony Sinn, 22, a civil and environmental engineering sophomore from Gloucester City, played soccer for 15 years. ?It?s interesting to see the results given my experience playing soccer. ?Heading? the ball hurt but it never seemed like I got injured,? said Sinn, who did not wear a helmet when he played. ?It will be interesting to see if the helmets do any good.?
While the team is finishing its research in May, preliminary findings indicate that one helmet is actually less effective in preventing injury than using no helmet at all, according to Chen.
?Soccer helmets are gaining wider acceptance, and it seems logical that they should provide protection. Our students? survey of the available literature, however, found that few tests have been conducted to confirm this assumption,? Chen said. ?Our goal is for the students to become aware that, as engineers, we have the capability and even responsibility to do such tests and provide the information to the public. That is job of an engineer.?
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Swarms of kids race across the grass each year, building their team skills, furthering their physical fitness and polishing their athletic skills ? and getting hit in the head with a ball or crashing into each other, goal posts or the ground.
Teams of Rowan University College of Engineering students working under the direction of mechanical engineering professors Drs. John Chen and Krishan Bhatia are exploring ways to keep those players safe.
From 1990 to 1999, there were an estimated 86,697 head injuries from soccer -- 21,715 of them concussions -- that landed players in American emergency rooms, according to the article ?Head Injuries Presenting to Emergency Department in the United States from 1990 to 1999 for Ice Hockey, Soccer, and Football,? in the March 2004 issue of ?Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine.? Those statistics made soccer a high-risk sport for concussions, according to author J. Scott Delaney. The American Academy of Pediatrics, he noted, defines soccer as a contact/collision sport, just as it does football and ice hockey.
This semester, 40 Rowan Engineering freshmen in the multidisciplinary Freshman Engineering Clinic are testing the effectiveness of four types of soccer helmets and also measuring the impact of ?hits? on an unprotected head. Using a ball-pitching machine, the students are firing soccer balls at 35 to 50 miles an hour at a crash test dummy. In addition, they have constructed tests that simulate the impact of the dummy in a collision with a goal post, the ground and another protected or unprotected head.
As various objects hit the head of the dummy ? the size of a small female designed to simulate a teenager ? the students are videotaping the impact with a high-speed camera that captures 500 frames per second. They also are monitoring the severity of the impact (front to back, side to side, and top to bottom) on the head and neck using a set of accelerometers embedded in the dummy?s head that measures the acceleration experienced in the various types of accidents.
?We?re trying to study whether the helmets actually reduce injury or not. Besides possible head and neck injury reduction, our students are also studying the effect these helmets have on a player?s ability to accurately head a ball as well as the long-term durability of these helmets after repeated impacts,? Bhatia said.
Anthony Sinn, 22, a civil and environmental engineering sophomore from Gloucester City, played soccer for 15 years. ?It?s interesting to see the results given my experience playing soccer. ?Heading? the ball hurt but it never seemed like I got injured,? said Sinn, who did not wear a helmet when he played. ?It will be interesting to see if the helmets do any good.?
While the team is finishing its research in May, preliminary findings indicate that one helmet is actually less effective in preventing injury than using no helmet at all, according to Chen.
?Soccer helmets are gaining wider acceptance, and it seems logical that they should provide protection. Our students? survey of the available literature, however, found that few tests have been conducted to confirm this assumption,? Chen said. ?Our goal is for the students to become aware that, as engineers, we have the capability and even responsibility to do such tests and provide the information to the public. That is job of an engineer.?
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