Ranking and Rating Bicycle Helmet Safety Performance in Oblique Impacts Using Eight Different Brain Injury Models

Madelen Fahlstedt, Fady F. Abayazid, Matthew B. Panzer, Antonia Trotta, Wei Zhao, Mazdak Ghajari, Michael D. Gilchrist, Songbai Ji, Svein Kleiven, Xiaogai Li, Aisling Ní Annaidh, Peter Halldin

Annals of Biomedical Engineering, 2021

Abstract

Bicycle helmets are shown to offer protection against head injuries. Rating methods and test standards are used to evaluate different helmet designs and safety performance. Both strain-based injury criteria obtained from finite element brain injury models and metrics derived from global kinematic responses can be used to evaluate helmet safety performance. Little is known about how different injury models or injury metrics would rank and rate different helmets. The objective of this study was to determine how eight brain models and eight metrics based on global kinematics rank and rate a large number of bicycle helmets (n=17) subjected to oblique impacts. The results showed that the ranking and rating are influenced by the choice of model and metric. Kendall's tau varied between 0.50 and 0.95 when the ranking was based on maximum principal strain from brain models. One specific helmet was rated as 2-star when using one brain model but as 4-star by another model. This could cause confusion for consumers rather than inform them of the relative safety performance of a helmet. Therefore, we suggest that the biomechanics community should create a norm or recommendation for future…

Cite as (BibTeX)

@article{fahlstedt-2021-ranking-and-rating-bicycle,
  title={Ranking and Rating Bicycle Helmet Safety Performance in Oblique Impacts Using Eight Different Brain Injury Models},
  author={Madelen Fahlstedt and Fady F. Abayazid and Matthew B. Panzer and Antonia Trotta and Wei Zhao and Mazdak Ghajari and Michael D. Gilchrist and Songbai Ji and Svein Kleiven and Xiaogai Li and Aisling Ní Annaidh and Peter Halldin},
  journal={Annals of Biomedical Engineering},
  year={2021},
  doi={10.1007/s10439-020-02703-w}
}