Conceptual completion and development of a prototype of an optimized bicycle safety helmet for improved head protection in child and adult cyclists

Bicycle accident victims are prone to head injury, the head injury being the cause of death in up to 93% of fatal accidents. Moreover, children are highly represented in these statistics and, hence, will strongly benefit from developing the best protective headgear possible. At KULeuven, an interdisciplinary research group has been working on head impact mechanics since 1999. This group was successful in unraveling causative mechanisms for several injury types, and was able to demonstrate that angular acceleration, the damaging mechanism in the most devastating brain injuries, can be reduced by the implementation of engineered anisotropic foams. Still, two hiatus need to be filled before an integrated set of helmet requirements covering all injury types can be formulated and can result in effectively improved protection.

1. First, critical thresholds of angular acceleration that correspond to the development of cerebral contusions still need to be identified, in conjunction with further characterization of brain material properties as input for the numerical models that extrapolate the physical experiments to real life circumstances.
2. Second, more research is required to produce optimized anisotropic materials that meet the protective requirements and can be implemented in complex designs such as helmets.

The current project aims at finishing both tasks mentioned in order to proceed to the development of a new improved child and adult bicycle helmet prototype.