Anisotropic polyethersulfone foam for bicycle helmet liners to reduce rotational acceleration during oblique impact

Although current standard bicycle helmets protect cyclists against linear acceleration, they still lack sufficient protection against rotational acceleration during oblique impact events. Rotational acceleration is correlated with serious traumatic brain injuries such as acute subdural haematoma and thus should be minimized. This study proposes using highly anisotropic polyethersulfone foam for bicycle helmet liners in order to limit the rotational acceleration. Helmet prototypes, made of polyethersulfone foam with cell anisotropy direction perpendicular to the head, have been produced and compared to a standard commercial helmet. Standard helmets consist of expanded polystyrene foam. Oblique impact tests were performed to measure both linear and rotational accelerations and impact pulse duration. Results demonstrate that the peak rotational acceleration of the polyethersulfone prototype helmet showed a decrease of around 40% compared to the reference expanded polystyrene helmet. Moreover, the peak linear...