Biomechanical surrogate headforms are used in various designs to study head impact response in automotive applications and to develop and/or certify, among other things, American football helmets. The Hybrid III and National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment (NOCSAE) headforms have both been commonly used to evaluate the effectiveness of football helmets. However, the response of these surrogates to loading at the chin and how that response affects the loads transferred from the jaw to the rest of the head are unknown. To address part of that concern, the current study compares the chin impact response performance of select human surrogates to that of the cadaver.

Surrogates with fixed and articulating jaws were tested under drop mass impact conditions that were used to describe the cadaveric response to impacts at the chin (Craig, 2007). The current study impacted a selection of Hybrid III and NOCSAE headforms with a 2.8 kg drop mass at drop heights of 300, 400 and 500 mm and a 5.2 kg mass at 500 mm. Results were compared to the response corridors. Additionally, the surrogate responses were compared to the mean cadaver response using a cumulative variance technique. A Hybrid III based surrogate headform with an articulating jaw demonstrated the best overall performance of the surrogates evaluated.