12 ms·

NFL Releases Finite Element Helmet Models

75 points by wyldfire 9y ago

jitl 9y ago
For those wondering what a finite element model is: > FE models are computational tools developed by breaking an object down into simpler parts (finite elements) and assembling them into a larger system of equations to model an entire structure—this facilitates the efficient analysis of design changes to that structure. FE models have been used to improve designs in many engineered products, including those in the aeronautics and automotive industries.
- Fenrisulfr 9y ago
  So they used mechanical engineering techniques you would learn junior year or earlier. I'm sure they used FEA on earlier helmets as well. This just sounds fancier. The next version is probably going to be called the DiffEq models. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_element_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_element_method
  - Zanta 9y ago
    This is a very dismissive comment. Many of my peers in grad school were developing finite element techniques - it's a huge area of active ongoing research. Getting realistic results is very tough in an application with non-linear materials (probably looking at anisotropic composites) and possibly fractures like this.
  - jwagenet 9y ago
    These FE models are almost certainly much more complicated than those tested in a junior year course. Anyone rig up a simulation and get some sort of result, but to get an accurate simulation result for a complex system like this requires thoughtful constraints, assumptions, and, as others mentioned, accurate material representations, among other things. FEA is a powerful tool, but much more complicated than providing a mesh and hitting go.
- 8note 9y ago
  having a mechanical background: it's a way to define objects so you can throw more hardware at the problem to get better approximations on how they deform and break.
kingkongjaffa 9y ago
You really need accurate material models for this to be any use. Without being able to validate the baseline condition using the same non-linear, anisotropic, material behaviour profiles, there's no way to develop new geometry and/or use novel materials, and actually prove it's better than before. They would ideally release their own, repeatable analysis files of their own benchmark condition. I suspect the best helmet for blunt impacts is probably a one/few-time use deal with crumple zones to absorb the energy of the impact and increase the time of the impact. After it's crumpled you would have to swap it out for a new helmet. Curious why they wouldn't just drop their funding on a grant for research in any top10 mechanical engineering department - the knowledge to develop this is readily available and the problem space is a fairly solved one. That being said Tesla has improved crash safety over what decades of safety engineers could do so maybe there is always space for improvement.
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  >Curious why they wouldn't just drop their funding on a grant for research in any top10 mechanical engineering department That's wishful thinking for the most part. I spent a fair bit of time as a student employee a ME department. Students who have little real world experience, assignments with specific criteria they need to fill and a handful of other classes and activities competing for their time are not the kind of people you want designing things. You can make them design things but you'll probably toss basically all of it out and start from near scratch if you want to make it suitable for production. ME degrees are about teaching students the process of engineering not about teaching students to produce results and predictably students suck at producing results but do fine with the process. Even the students who are good at delivery results make rookie mistakes and go down time consuming dead ends left and right. Sure you can get some real engineers to hold their hands and help produce results but you'd need to have them so involved that you're better off just having an program to help place students in internships. >Tesla has improved crash safety over what decades of safety engineers could do How so? By building an incrementally stiffer (with regard to passenger cabin) box on wheels enabled by better packaging requirements of an electric drive-train?
  - 9y ago
lev99 9y ago
The $60million dollar in funding shows the NFL is taking the issue more seriously than it ever has. I suspect there are individuals in the NFL organization that care about the health of their players, but most individuals see this as good PR and risk mitigation. If the NFL does nothing to address it's safety profile they are vulnerable to external regulations. I'm unsure if this sport can be played safely with any equipment, and playsmartplaysafe.com does little to assure me new changes to helmets are coming to sharply reduce concussions. It does show me that the NFL is open to changes in their helmet design. I'd be interesting in listening to people active in the helmet industry, physicists and doctors about this new platform.
mikestew 9y ago
Summarizing: "Because this activity is so dangerous, and results in many head injuries, we've spent $60 million developing a framework for manufacturers to make helmets that will mitigate the injuries from the this entirely voluntary activity." Umm, has anyone considered just not doing this activity? I don't mean to be trite, but that's what it looks like from the perspective of one who has little interest in football. If so much protection is required to not turn participants into literal mental cases, the logical next step would be... Sure, the same could be said about, say, motorcycling. But at least my motorcycle takes me places. OTOH, no one is paying millions in broadcast rights so that people can watch me ride a motorcycle on TV.
- jessaustin 9y ago
  It seems you've answered your own question?
  - mikestew 9y ago
    It was a bit of a rhetorical exercise, yes.
- draw_down 9y ago
  Too much money at stake. Way, way too much.
- drunner 9y ago
  You aren't going to get the activity of football to go away even if it is risky and bad idea for ones health. Just look at all the dumb stuff our country does already. To pose a different question, I always wonder if this is the wrong direction. Why not remove the helmets altogether? Or go back to the leather ones? Has their been any comparative studies from head injuries back before the plastic shell was introduced? Or perhaps relativeness to Rugby head injuries?
  - Someone1234 9y ago
    > You aren't going to get the activity of football to go away even if it is risky and bad idea for ones health. It will never go away completely but it is already shrinking: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-football-youth-decline-met-20170904-story.html http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-footbal... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-kids-tackle-football/fewer-u-s-high-school-athletes-play-football-amid-concussion-fears-idUSKCN1GO2LY https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-kids-tackle-footba... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/19/sports/football/tackle-football-brain-youth.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/19/sports/football/tackle-fo... The younger you get the larger the loss in popularity. Contrast that against "soccer" (football) which has gained in popularity over the same period: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/shane-paul-neil/soccer-is-here-for-real-t_b_9730440.html https://www.huffingtonpost.com/shane-paul-neil/soccer-is-her... And basketball has also been surging in popularity: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/dec/12/nba-surpassed-nfl-league-of-americas-future-kareem-abdul-jabbar https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/dec/12/nba-surpassed-...
graeham 9y ago
Its great that the NFL is supporting biomechanics research (and will hopefully help the sport as well). However, while the models are open source they seem to be created for LS-DYNA, which is a fairly expensive program. I'm not aware of any good open source finite element packages, but I bet this will limit uptake of their models.
matte_black 9y ago
Only thing safer helmets will do is encourage players to hit harder and harder, until someone really gets killed. I hope one day I will get to see the end of football. Why would any parent enroll their child in this sport?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- briffle 9y ago
  So your advocating for an abstinence only education, when it comes to football?
  - komali2 9y ago
    Or, to not have helmets at all, or much thinner helmets. Much like bare-knuckle or thin-padded gloves contribute to less "hard" hits being thrown in UFC than in boxing, or how Rugby players don't get the kind of brain injuries because they aren't smacking their heads into eachother as hard as football players are.
    - slg 9y ago
      Helmets were introduced because a dozen plus kids were dying every year playing it due to things like skull fractures. Football is an inherently violent game and it is because of the rules not the helmets.
    - lloydde 9y ago
      UFC: study that supports that assetion verses other factors like less money/rewards, shorter careers and full body contact? Different weight classes? Boxing vs Muay Thai? Yes, intuitively smaller gloves should contribute to less slow damage, but should also cause more acute and immediate injuries.
  - sakuronto 9y ago
    Yes, in the same way I'd argue for an abstinence-only education when it comes to repeatedly bashing your own head against the wall.
asmithmd1 9y ago
Not only does the company that developed the models retain all ownership, they attach a kind of viral ownership to anything developed using them: "if you develop an Improvement based on or utilizing the Content, and you ...agree that you will not assert any claim, including any claim of infringement, against Biocore for our use of any Improvement"
jacobsenscott 9y ago
It doesn't take much to cause mild traumatic brain injury, and no amount of helmet research will change that. This is safety theater.
pauljaworski 9y ago
I feel like removing helmets from the game entirely would actually be safer than improving helmets. The helmet just creates this false sense of safety that encourages using your head as a point of contact.
- SPBesui 9y ago
  Lots of people agree with you, including one of the greatest NFL wide receivers: https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/12/04/hines-ward-if-you-want-to-prevent-concussions-take-the-helmet-off/ https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/12/04/hines-ward-...
slg 9y ago
Safer helmets can do only so much as they are mostly a protection from external trauma. Little can be done to address the simple physics of inertia that causes the brain to crash into the skull due to sudden acceleration in any direction. The only thing that can drastically reduce that trauma is to make rule changes to the game to avoid the type of collisions that cause that acceleration.
- Pulcinella 9y ago
  If helmet size was no obstacle, could you add a thick inner layer of much softer foam to help gradually slow down the skull so the brain would crash into a suddenly stopped skull?
  - slg 9y ago
    Anything done to spread the acceleration out over a larger duration will help but once again it can only do so much. There is a point in which any additional padding is useless because the rest of the body has already come to a stop and there is only so much that your neck and spine can stretch before your skull will have to stop as well.
  - joncrane 9y ago
    There have been a couple (or more) guys throughout the years that designed and implemented their own extra cushioning on their helmets, like this: http://www.helmethut.com/DrDelrye/Dr102808a.jpg http://www.helmethut.com/DrDelrye/Dr102808a.jpg The extra foam was always on the outside, I believe. Not sure how well it worked.
mfrisbie 9y ago
Jerry Seinfeld said it best: "Now why did we invent the helmet? Well, because we were participating in many activities that were cracking our heads. We looked at the situation. We chose not to avoid these activities, but to just make little plastic hats so that we can continue our head-cracking lifestyles."
notadoc 9y ago
Sorry, but I really don't think fancier helmet padding is the answer to the CTE, concussion, head/neck/spine injury problem. You have to change the game to stop the type of head-leading and head-targeting hits that are glorified in the current model of the sport. And yes, you can still easily tackle without ramming your helmeted skull into someone elses head. Just watch Rugby, or any kids play pick-up football on a field, both are entirely without pads and helmets, and tackling is a major part of the experience. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMHRZ8LzS7Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMHRZ8LzS7Q
dopeboy 9y ago
Here I was getting excited for something related to react-helmet.
frockington 9y ago
The NFL would rather do anything than actually enforce the steroid policy
- mi100hael 9y ago
  If they crack down, players will just find new ways to cheat. It's whack-a-mole, and none of the fans actually care, so why bother?
werber 9y ago
I thought they ripped off Xenith for a second before realizing this is a Xenith product.
alkonaut 9y ago
I read somewhere a lot of the concussions in football are not due to blunt hits to the head of the kind helmets can stop, but simply from extreme accelerations (such as after a big hit to the upper body) throwing the brain around inside the skull? If that’s really the case then the troubling conclusion might be that the game is very hard to make safe through technology.
cascom 9y ago
Won't better helmets just lead to harder hits? Go back to soft helmets and behavior will change...
timeisapear 9y ago
The model of the helmet for use in concussion studies is only as good as your model for the (more complex) system of human skin, skull, and brain suspended in cerebrospinal fluid.
ypeterholmes 9y ago
But the helmets themselves are still hard as can be. Honest question: why not replace a traditional style of helmet with a larger, inflated style bubble that in addition to protecting the head, would not itself produce any sort of large impact force?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- spectra72 9y ago
  They tried something like that. The Kazoo Helmet. It had the unfortunate propensity to briefly stick to an opposing helmet during a collision rather than slide off the other helmet's hard surface causing a wrenching of the neck.
socratewasright 9y ago
All the high impact sports (ie football, rugby, boxing, wrestling) feel like a relic of times past. I hope eventually VR reaches a point where the players get to perform on a virtual arena while their physical bodies are inside a simulation room. Sensor suits like those used to enable motion capture [0] and some multidirectional treadmill [1] would enable the same activities in a much safer environment. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOWS8K-jMGg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOWS8K-jMGg [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEhwLRX4m2s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEhwLRX4m2s
neo4sure 9y ago
Can the NFL defy the laws of physics?

75 points by wyldfire 9y ago

jitl 9y ago

For those wondering what a finite element model is: > FE models are computational tools developed by breaking an object down into simpler parts (finite elements) and assembling them into a larger system of equations to model an entire structure—this facilitates the efficient analysis of design changes to that structure. FE models have been used to improve designs in many engineered products, including those in the aeronautics and automotive industries.

Fenrisulfr 9y ago
So they used mechanical engineering techniques you would learn junior year or earlier. I'm sure they used FEA on earlier helmets as well. This just sounds fancier. The next version is probably going to be called the DiffEq models. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_element_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_element_method
- Zanta 9y ago
  This is a very dismissive comment. Many of my peers in grad school were developing finite element techniques - it's a huge area of active ongoing research. Getting realistic results is very tough in an application with non-linear materials (probably looking at anisotropic composites) and possibly fractures like this.
- jwagenet 9y ago
  These FE models are almost certainly much more complicated than those tested in a junior year course. Anyone rig up a simulation and get some sort of result, but to get an accurate simulation result for a complex system like this requires thoughtful constraints, assumptions, and, as others mentioned, accurate material representations, among other things. FEA is a powerful tool, but much more complicated than providing a mesh and hitting go.
8note 9y ago
having a mechanical background: it's a way to define objects so you can throw more hardware at the problem to get better approximations on how they deform and break.

kingkongjaffa 9y ago

You really need accurate material models for this to be any use. Without being able to validate the baseline condition using the same non-linear, anisotropic, material behaviour profiles, there's no way to develop new geometry and/or use novel materials, and actually prove it's better than before. They would ideally release their own, repeatable analysis files of their own benchmark condition. I suspect the best helmet for blunt impacts is probably a one/few-time use deal with crumple zones to absorb the energy of the impact and increase the time of the impact. After it's crumpled you would have to swap it out for a new helmet. Curious why they wouldn't just drop their funding on a grant for research in any top10 mechanical engineering department - the knowledge to develop this is readily available and the problem space is a fairly solved one. That being said Tesla has improved crash safety over what decades of safety engineers could do so maybe there is always space for improvement.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago
>Curious why they wouldn't just drop their funding on a grant for research in any top10 mechanical engineering department That's wishful thinking for the most part. I spent a fair bit of time as a student employee a ME department. Students who have little real world experience, assignments with specific criteria they need to fill and a handful of other classes and activities competing for their time are not the kind of people you want designing things. You can make them design things but you'll probably toss basically all of it out and start from near scratch if you want to make it suitable for production. ME degrees are about teaching students the process of engineering not about teaching students to produce results and predictably students suck at producing results but do fine with the process. Even the students who are good at delivery results make rookie mistakes and go down time consuming dead ends left and right. Sure you can get some real engineers to hold their hands and help produce results but you'd need to have them so involved that you're better off just having an program to help place students in internships. >Tesla has improved crash safety over what decades of safety engineers could do How so? By building an incrementally stiffer (with regard to passenger cabin) box on wheels enabled by better packaging requirements of an electric drive-train?
- 9y ago

lev99 9y ago

The $60million dollar in funding shows the NFL is taking the issue more seriously than it ever has. I suspect there are individuals in the NFL organization that care about the health of their players, but most individuals see this as good PR and risk mitigation. If the NFL does nothing to address it's safety profile they are vulnerable to external regulations. I'm unsure if this sport can be played safely with any equipment, and playsmartplaysafe.com does little to assure me new changes to helmets are coming to sharply reduce concussions. It does show me that the NFL is open to changes in their helmet design. I'd be interesting in listening to people active in the helmet industry, physicists and doctors about this new platform.

mikestew 9y ago

Summarizing: "Because this activity is so dangerous, and results in many head injuries, we've spent $60 million developing a framework for manufacturers to make helmets that will mitigate the injuries from the this entirely voluntary activity." Umm, has anyone considered just not doing this activity? I don't mean to be trite, but that's what it looks like from the perspective of one who has little interest in football. If so much protection is required to not turn participants into literal mental cases, the logical next step would be... Sure, the same could be said about, say, motorcycling. But at least my motorcycle takes me places. OTOH, no one is paying millions in broadcast rights so that people can watch me ride a motorcycle on TV.

jessaustin 9y ago
It seems you've answered your own question?
- mikestew 9y ago
  It was a bit of a rhetorical exercise, yes.
draw_down 9y ago
Too much money at stake. Way, way too much.
drunner 9y ago
You aren't going to get the activity of football to go away even if it is risky and bad idea for ones health. Just look at all the dumb stuff our country does already. To pose a different question, I always wonder if this is the wrong direction. Why not remove the helmets altogether? Or go back to the leather ones? Has their been any comparative studies from head injuries back before the plastic shell was introduced? Or perhaps relativeness to Rugby head injuries?
- Someone1234 9y ago
  > You aren't going to get the activity of football to go away even if it is risky and bad idea for ones health. It will never go away completely but it is already shrinking: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-football-youth-decline-met-20170904-story.html http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-footbal... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-kids-tackle-football/fewer-u-s-high-school-athletes-play-football-amid-concussion-fears-idUSKCN1GO2LY https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-kids-tackle-footba... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/19/sports/football/tackle-football-brain-youth.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/19/sports/football/tackle-fo... The younger you get the larger the loss in popularity. Contrast that against "soccer" (football) which has gained in popularity over the same period: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/shane-paul-neil/soccer-is-here-for-real-t_b_9730440.html https://www.huffingtonpost.com/shane-paul-neil/soccer-is-her... And basketball has also been surging in popularity: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/dec/12/nba-surpassed-nfl-league-of-americas-future-kareem-abdul-jabbar https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/dec/12/nba-surpassed-...

graeham 9y ago

Its great that the NFL is supporting biomechanics research (and will hopefully help the sport as well). However, while the models are open source they seem to be created for LS-DYNA, which is a fairly expensive program. I'm not aware of any good open source finite element packages, but I bet this will limit uptake of their models.

matte_black 9y ago

Only thing safer helmets will do is encourage players to hit harder and harder, until someone really gets killed. I hope one day I will get to see the end of football. Why would any parent enroll their child in this sport?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
briffle 9y ago
So your advocating for an abstinence only education, when it comes to football?
- komali2 9y ago
  Or, to not have helmets at all, or much thinner helmets. Much like bare-knuckle or thin-padded gloves contribute to less "hard" hits being thrown in UFC than in boxing, or how Rugby players don't get the kind of brain injuries because they aren't smacking their heads into eachother as hard as football players are.
  - slg 9y ago
    Helmets were introduced because a dozen plus kids were dying every year playing it due to things like skull fractures. Football is an inherently violent game and it is because of the rules not the helmets.
  - lloydde 9y ago
    UFC: study that supports that assetion verses other factors like less money/rewards, shorter careers and full body contact? Different weight classes? Boxing vs Muay Thai? Yes, intuitively smaller gloves should contribute to less slow damage, but should also cause more acute and immediate injuries.
- sakuronto 9y ago
  Yes, in the same way I'd argue for an abstinence-only education when it comes to repeatedly bashing your own head against the wall.

asmithmd1 9y ago

Not only does the company that developed the models retain all ownership, they attach a kind of viral ownership to anything developed using them: "if you develop an Improvement based on or utilizing the Content, and you ...agree that you will not assert any claim, including any claim of infringement, against Biocore for our use of any Improvement"

jacobsenscott 9y ago

It doesn't take much to cause mild traumatic brain injury, and no amount of helmet research will change that. This is safety theater.

pauljaworski 9y ago

I feel like removing helmets from the game entirely would actually be safer than improving helmets. The helmet just creates this false sense of safety that encourages using your head as a point of contact.

SPBesui 9y ago
Lots of people agree with you, including one of the greatest NFL wide receivers: https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/12/04/hines-ward-if-you-want-to-prevent-concussions-take-the-helmet-off/ https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/12/04/hines-ward-...

slg 9y ago

Safer helmets can do only so much as they are mostly a protection from external trauma. Little can be done to address the simple physics of inertia that causes the brain to crash into the skull due to sudden acceleration in any direction. The only thing that can drastically reduce that trauma is to make rule changes to the game to avoid the type of collisions that cause that acceleration.

Pulcinella 9y ago
If helmet size was no obstacle, could you add a thick inner layer of much softer foam to help gradually slow down the skull so the brain would crash into a suddenly stopped skull?
- slg 9y ago
  Anything done to spread the acceleration out over a larger duration will help but once again it can only do so much. There is a point in which any additional padding is useless because the rest of the body has already come to a stop and there is only so much that your neck and spine can stretch before your skull will have to stop as well.
- joncrane 9y ago
  There have been a couple (or more) guys throughout the years that designed and implemented their own extra cushioning on their helmets, like this: http://www.helmethut.com/DrDelrye/Dr102808a.jpg http://www.helmethut.com/DrDelrye/Dr102808a.jpg The extra foam was always on the outside, I believe. Not sure how well it worked.

mfrisbie 9y ago

Jerry Seinfeld said it best: "Now why did we invent the helmet? Well, because we were participating in many activities that were cracking our heads. We looked at the situation. We chose not to avoid these activities, but to just make little plastic hats so that we can continue our head-cracking lifestyles."

notadoc 9y ago

Sorry, but I really don't think fancier helmet padding is the answer to the CTE, concussion, head/neck/spine injury problem. You have to change the game to stop the type of head-leading and head-targeting hits that are glorified in the current model of the sport. And yes, you can still easily tackle without ramming your helmeted skull into someone elses head. Just watch Rugby, or any kids play pick-up football on a field, both are entirely without pads and helmets, and tackling is a major part of the experience. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMHRZ8LzS7Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMHRZ8LzS7Q

dopeboy 9y ago

Here I was getting excited for something related to react-helmet.

frockington 9y ago

The NFL would rather do anything than actually enforce the steroid policy

mi100hael 9y ago
If they crack down, players will just find new ways to cheat. It's whack-a-mole, and none of the fans actually care, so why bother?

werber 9y ago

I thought they ripped off Xenith for a second before realizing this is a Xenith product.

alkonaut 9y ago

I read somewhere a lot of the concussions in football are not due to blunt hits to the head of the kind helmets can stop, but simply from extreme accelerations (such as after a big hit to the upper body) throwing the brain around inside the skull? If that’s really the case then the troubling conclusion might be that the game is very hard to make safe through technology.

cascom 9y ago

Won't better helmets just lead to harder hits? Go back to soft helmets and behavior will change...

timeisapear 9y ago

The model of the helmet for use in concussion studies is only as good as your model for the (more complex) system of human skin, skull, and brain suspended in cerebrospinal fluid.

ypeterholmes 9y ago

But the helmets themselves are still hard as can be. Honest question: why not replace a traditional style of helmet with a larger, inflated style bubble that in addition to protecting the head, would not itself produce any sort of large impact force?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
spectra72 9y ago
They tried something like that. The Kazoo Helmet. It had the unfortunate propensity to briefly stick to an opposing helmet during a collision rather than slide off the other helmet's hard surface causing a wrenching of the neck.

socratewasright 9y ago

All the high impact sports (ie football, rugby, boxing, wrestling) feel like a relic of times past. I hope eventually VR reaches a point where the players get to perform on a virtual arena while their physical bodies are inside a simulation room. Sensor suits like those used to enable motion capture [0] and some multidirectional treadmill [1] would enable the same activities in a much safer environment. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOWS8K-jMGg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOWS8K-jMGg [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEhwLRX4m2s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEhwLRX4m2s

neo4sure 9y ago

Can the NFL defy the laws of physics?