A six degree of freedom head acceleration measurement device for use in football

The high incidence rate of concussions in football provides a unique opportunity to collect biomechanical data to characterize mild traumatic brain injury. The goal of this study was to validate a six degree of freedom (6DOF) measurement device with 12 single-axis accelerometers that uses a novel al...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of applied biomechanics 2011-02, Vol.27 (1), p.8-14
Main Authors: Rowson, Steven, Beckwith, Jonathan G, Chu, Jeffrey J, Leonard, Daniel S, Greenwald, Richard M, Duma, Stefan M
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acceleration
Equipment Design
Equipment Failure Analysis
Football
Football - physiology
Head Movements - physiology
Head Protective Devices
Humans
Monitoring, Ambulatory - instrumentation
Sports Equipment
Telemetry - instrumentation
Transducers
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Summary:The high incidence rate of concussions in football provides a unique opportunity to collect biomechanical data to characterize mild traumatic brain injury. The goal of this study was to validate a six degree of freedom (6DOF) measurement device with 12 single-axis accelerometers that uses a novel algorithm to compute linear and angular head accelerations for each axis of the head. The 6DOF device can be integrated into existing football helmets and is capable of wireless data transmission. A football helmet equipped with the 6DOF device was fitted to a Hybrid III head instrumented with a 9 accelerometer array. The helmet was impacted using a pneumatic linear impactor. Hybrid III head accelerations were compared with that of the 6DOF device. For all impacts, peak Hybrid III head accelerations ranged from 24 g to 176 g and 1,506 rad/s(2) to 14,431 rad/s(2). Average errors for peak linear and angular head acceleration were 1% ± 18% and 3% ± 24%, respectively. The average RMS error of the temporal response for each impact was 12.5 g and 907 rad/s(2).
ISSN:1065-8483
1543-2688
DOI:10.1123/jab.27.1.8