Athletes participating in contact sports can experience severe impacts with unique loading mechanisms. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 1.6 million to 3.8 million concussions occur in sports annually, with the majority occurring in American Football. However, contact sports are not the only sport with injury risk. Within motorsports, drivers can be subjected to high severity impacts which have been shown to result in injury to the driver. Modern innovations in motorsport safety has reduced the risk for drivers but there are challenges in estimating and preventing injury risk for these multi- variable crash environments. Traditional methods of testing have been a cornerstone to the enhancement of safety in these sports. However, simulation-based approaches through finite element analysis provide researchers with added flexibility to study these impact environments and develop effective countermeasures.

A validated finite element helmet model could be used in further study of head injury to mitigate the toll of concussions in American football. The goal was to develop an accurate and representative helmet model (Schutt Air XP Pro) and validate it through a series of 67 representative impacts similar to those experienced by a football player. The kinematic and kinetic response between the model and the physical tests were quantitatively evaluated using CORelation and Analysis (CORA), resulting in an overall CORA score of 0.76.

In order to further study the loading mechanisms and resulting injury risk of drivers during motorsport crash events, a parametric study was designed to integrate a family of human body models into a motorsport environment and simulate a series of representative impacts. The goal of this project was twofold. First, analyze the injury risk of a 50 th percentile male occupant through these impacts using a set of PMHS-derived injury risk functions. Second, use risk estimates from the M50-OS as a baseline in order to correlate how enhanced helmet systems and body size affect risk, by analyzing changes in the underlying injury metrics. HBM parametric studies such as this may provide an avenue to assist injury detection for motorsport incidents, improve triage effectiveness, and assist in the development of safety standards.