Yoshiki Umaba, Atsushi Sakuma, Yuelin Zhang
Lecture Notes in Computational Vision and Biomechanics 36 592-596 2020年 査読有り
American football is a sport that requires high safety precaution for players because it entails very fast and powerful movements. The players’ helmets are one of the most important means of ensuring their safety, and so the mechanical design of these helmets is extremely difficult for the manufacturer. Therefore, in this report, the mechanical behavior of the pad material is measured experimentally and then it is formulated by theoretical simulation for design of the helmet numerically. Then, an analysis of the collision problem of the helmet is carried out using the characteristics of the pad material obtained in these mechanical tests. Numerical analyses are carried out by changing the material characteristics and movement of physical model while keeping the structure of the helmet and head constant. LS-Dyna is used in the numerical simulation because of its availability in crash analysis. In the analysis results, it was first confirmed that the optimum characteristics of the pad material can be defined by the mechanics of plateau stress. With these results, the concept of a usage limit due to deterioration of the pad material is discussed in addition to the suggestion of helmet specifications according to the physique and exercise capacity of the football players.