NEW TEST EQUIPMENT TO STUDY TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY

Team Wendy Installs New Test Equipment to Contribute toward Mild Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI) Prediction Model

 
As previously reported in our post “Combating Traumatic Brain Injury Through a New Study," Team Wendy is partnering with several universities and research groups to conduct comprehensive research into mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). Under a grant from the Office of Naval Research, we’re working with Brown University, Sandia National Laboratories, Drexel University and the Franck Lab at the University of Wisconsin in a three-year study to analyze the cellular mechanisms of mTBI and link cellular response to the kinematics of head impact.
 
To achieve this, we brought in a new piece of equipment: a six degrees of freedom triaxial impact machine that will be used to study new head impact scenarios and capture more complex and realistic kinematics of the head than we’ve previously been able to. The new machine will allow full linear and rotational movement, as opposed to the standard DOT method where the headform is constrained to linear movement only.

Although progress is continually being made in understanding brain injury causes, there is no single well-established rotational injury threshold, nor a standardized method for testing combat helmets against it. The new test equipment will be used to carry out impacts with a variety of different head/neck surrogate combinations. Combined with cellular study and finite element modeling, this will provide insight into what the current helmet test methods represent as well as identifying areas to improve methodology and gain new insights.
 
Team Wendy will use the data generated from these impacts to better understand how cellular injury originates during linear and rotational impacts, and armed with this knowledge, we ultimately hope to develop new materials and helmet designs aimed at improved impact protection. Our research and development team is extremely excited to start testing with the new triaxial impact machine and couldn’t wait for it to be installed so we could start gathering new data.

By Ron Szalkowski
Director, Product Development & Research Collaboration