Impact Resistance Evaluation of Baseball Eye Guards

Abstract

According to the report by the Japan Sports Council, there are about 40,000 cases of insurance compensation for eye injuries in school sports activities at primary, junior and senior high schools in a year. Besides, there have been 259 cases of blindness and other sequelae caused by accidental injuries in baseball play over the past decade. However, there is no suitable eye guard, even more no specification for eye protection on playing baseball in Japan. In contrast to baseball, there is an obligation to wear an eye guard in women's lacrosse game, and there are eye guard product specifications in ASTM F3077. Therefore, this study explores the product development and design of baseball eye guards through the baseball impact resistance evaluation using both impact and free-fall experiments on women’s lacrosse eye guards. As for the performance evaluation, this study mainly focused on whether the ball contacts to the eye point of the face model or not, the maximum load transmitted to the face model, and the deformation amount of the eye guards after the collision of a ball. Additionally, the correlation between the two experimental evaluation, impact and free fall method was also discussed. In terms of the peak value of the load, there were some differences between the results of the two experiments. On the other hand, the deformation amount of the eye guard were commensurate between the two experiments at the same impact energy. It provides a sufficient basis for the development of baseball eye guard product specifications.