American football (AF) is characterized as a collision sport and it has been reported that there are a lot of injuries including catastrophic injuries. Many reports state that head injury has occurred in about 10% of the whole, and especially the incidence of a brain concussion is very high. Biomechanics research to analyze a mechanism of the brain concussion by video analysis has been done since the 1960s. Then, several collision experiments to investigate the linear and rotational accelerations acting in the head during a collision in the actual field have been conducted since 2003. However, it is not clear the relationship between the magnitude of the linear and rotational accelerations and the severity of concussion. Therefore, the effect of the helmet itself at the time of a collision needs to be reconfirmed. The purpose of this study is to examine both the action forces exerted on the helmet at the time of a collision and the reliability of a new method with strain gauges. The specially made helmet which was equipped with the strain gauges was placed on the force plate and another helmet was dropped from the top to the helmet. We could confirm the estimated value of acting force to the helmet from the force confirmed from the strain gauges, and also confirmed the reliability of the new method in the collision tests in vivo in the near future.
The Proceedings of Joint Symposium: Symposium on Sports Engineering, Symposium on Human Dynamics
