A Novel Approach to Protective Helmet Design in Head Injury Prevention: The Use of Non-Newtonian Fluids

Introduction Protective helmets are designed to prevent catastrophic injuries cause by linear acceleration, such as skull fractures and intracranial bleeds. It is clear that they work for this purpose, as head injury mortalities have declined with their widespread distribution. It is becoming increasingly apparent that milder forms of brain injury have significant morbidity. As it appears that angular acceleration is a significantly contributing factor to these injuries, it would be appropriate to investigate whether designing helmets that mitigate these forces may further decrease injury. Our hypothesis is that by adding a non-newtonian fluid layer to a helmet, the fluid will become more solid and ultimately develop stress fractures which dissipates energy. In doing this, energy transmission to the head of the wearer is less and ultimately protects the wearer better.