From children’s toys and dental picks to fireworks, waterparks, and drones, the Helmet Lab has helped create the parameters by which countless devices and activities can be safely used and enjoyed.
That’s because whether it’s through requests from industry or their own innate curiosity, the researchers have prioritized leveraging their peer-reviewed methods for tangible public outcomes.
“That’s really the important part, right?” said Stefan Duma, University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech. “You know, oftentimes research can be esoteric and very theoretical. We’re doing a lot of that fundamental research, but the fun part is that translational part and how we affect people in their everyday lives.”
Inspired by a military research conference in the early 2000s, Duma began instrumenting football players with sensors to better understand head impacts through a partnership with the nearby Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine and the Virginia Tech football team. The research evolved to include also evaluating the protection provided by different helmets, which grew into the Helmet Lab.
Since its debut, the Helmet Lab has helped protect millions of athletes by conducting research to directly measure head impacts in people and then using that data to develop peer-reviewed methods for testing and rating helmets. This work has reshaped the industry and garnered media attention in 17 countries across six continents.
“It’s probably had the single biggest influence in driving helmet technology,” said Steven Broglio, director of the University of Michigan Concussion Center. “What I mean by that is they’re not developing new pads and foams and plastics, but without the helmet rating system, the helmet industry isn’t making any changes.”
About the same time the lab began to test helmets, they began to apply their testing to a variety of other areas and have ultimately helped craft both government and industry safety standards.
“Our primary research focuses on injury biomechanics,” said Steve Rowson, the lab’s director. “So, we look to figure out the forces that cause injury to the human body. And if we understand that, we can do things to prevent injury from occurring.”
Similar to the roots of their helmet research, which grew out of studying head impacts on soldiers, the lab’s evaluation of other activities and devices started as part of a Department of Defense (DOD) project to increase soldier safety in an evolving warfare landscape.
“If you go back to the 80s and 90s, the type of conflict and injuries soldiers experienced really shifted. Improvised Explosive Devices, or IED’s, became a big issue, and our troops started seeing a lot more shrapnel to the face, resulting in more eye injuries,” said Duma, who is also the director the university’s Institute for Critical and Applied Science, in which the Helmet Lab resides. “For about 10 years, the DOD funded the research, which was thousands of experiments, and years of design and development, culminating with the development of the Facial and Ocular Countermeasure Safety, or FOCUS, head form.”
The head form includes force-sensing eyes, sensors to measure force on every facial bone, and a skin-like covering. This allows researchers to calculate how an object’s size, shape, and velocity, as well as the associated blast wave of energy, can impact a human and how protective gear stands up against those forces.
“You can put goggles on there and hit it with whatever you’re going to be exposed to and we can tell you exactly what the risk of different eye injuries and what the risk of facial fracture is going to be for any different bone,” said Duma, also the Harry Wyatt Professor of Engineering. “And that sort of revolutionized soldiers wearing googles….and has helped dramatically reduce eye injuries and facial fractures.”
Shortly after the first FOCUS studies published in 2010, Nerf, a brand synonymous with toy dart blasters, contacted the lab to see if the research might also help them set safer parameters for their toys. Currently, Nerf is owned by Hasbro, Inc., a multinational toy, board game, and media entertainment company.
Using the methods developed for the DOD, the lab was able to quantify the impact of a projected dart and then calculate a weight and velocity that would mitigate the damage to an eye or bone.
“So that really revolutionized the toy industry because they then had exact numbers to set the standards for how fast a projectile should go,” Duma said. “And it’s been fascinating all the different things they’ve come up with, over the years, from darts to discs to the little balls. There’s always something new to test.”
In 2017, the researchers helped Nerf identify that an uptick in blaster-related injuries was actually due to off-brand darts, which led to a new level of consumer insight. And today, many of Nerf’s higher velocity products include a form of eye protection and warnings.
From there, the Helmet Lab continued to translate their work into new spaces, particularly wet ones. They developed similar standards for water guns and other water-related activities.
“If you ever take your kid to a water park, they often shoot water out of the ground and every kid walks over and looks straight down,” Duma said. “There’s a real risk if it’s too fast and there had never been any quantified research on it.”
Duma and his team filled that gap, finding that eight meters per second is the peak safe velocity for a water stream. Their work was published in the medical journal, Current Eye Research, and simplified to 20 feet per second, has been adopted into state codes including Utah, Georgia, and Florida, as well as by the National Association of County and City Health Officials.
The lab produced similar numbers for popular water toys, such as Super Soakers, and other toys that extend outward at high velocity, such as spring-powered light sabers.
“We greatly appreciate the expertise that the Helmet Lab at Virginia Tech has provided to Hasbro over the years,” said Jacob Borowiec, manager of product quality assurance at Hasbro.
Travis Williams, Virginia Tech
