Abstract
The performance of the baseball helmet with regards to shock-absorption is improved by selecting appropriate shell and liner materials. In this study, we developed a new baseball helmet that offers improved shock-absorption performance and is lightweight owing to carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) used as the shell material. A baseball impact experiment was conducted by using a hexahedron-shaped headform and flat test specimen, and the CFRP shell material was compared with polycarbonate (PC) and acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) resin shell material. The performance of the helmet was evaluated in terms of external and internal damage of the CFRP shell material, the pressure that acted on the surface of headform, and the acceleration of the current performance standard of baseball helmets. As a result, we found that CFRP helmets were superior in terms of shock-absorption performance while remaining lightweight.
