MADISON, Wis. — From the football field to the front lines of war, helmets are the first defense against brain injury. With more research going into materials that prevent kinetic energy from an impact reaching the brain, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison believe their new carbon nanotube foam will get ahead in the head game.
“Three-point-two million Americans experience concussions every year,” said assistant professor Ramathasan Thevamaran.
It’s the lining between the skull and the helmet that does most of the protecting from concussions and other injuries — and that’s what Professor Thevamaran and his team are hoping to improve with their carbon nanotube foam.
“So, we had to come up with pads on the helmet shell that would be able to attenuate the shockwaves due to impact, and by the time those shockwaves get transmitted to the brain they don’t cause damage,” he said.
Currently, most helmets are lined with polymeric foam, “but when you push them to extreme impact velocities or extreme temperatures, it could be very cold, very hot temperatures, they do not provide the performance that you would desire,” the professor said.
So to create a foam from scratch that could take big hits in extreme temps, and retain its shape, they went tubular — with carbon nanotubes no more than one atom thick.
“At 10-micron thickness, we found that it was actually the strongest,” said Abhishek Gupta, a graduate student who worked on the project.
“So, this itself is great in absorbing shocks because of the intrinsic nanofiber properties,” Thevamaran said.
After 180 different experiments, they found the strongest way to arrange the nanotubes was in cylinders.
“It can absorb energy 18 times more than the foam currently used in the helmets,” Gupta said.
The microscopic discovery is getting big attention.
“It can actually change the game,” Gupta said.
Its uses are not just in sports. A combat helmet manufacturer called Team Wendy is going to test their liner in a prototype.
“We will put these in as pads and then drop them, from drop towers with actual head, mannequins so that we’ll be able to study them under realistic conditions,” Professor Thevamaran said.
According to the professor, their work could be on the market in several years.
“Here we are trying to save lives, whether it’s in sports-related injuries or whether it’s in combat helmets in the battlefield or first responders who respond to emergency situations,” he said.
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