SAFETY HELMET PERFORMANCE INVESTIGATION. VOLUME II

The stated objective of this project was to ascertain the capability of the best available helmets to meet the Head Injury Criterion (HIC) proposed in the Motorcycle Helmet Notice of Proposed Rule Making for September 1974, with particular emphasis on helmets recently developed to improve impact attenuation. Also, performance was correlated of similar helmets when tested for impact attenuation using both a magnesium alloy headform (per the proposed standard) and a similar headform constructed to be more like the human head. The following conclusions are made from this work: None of the helmet models tested passed the Head Injury Criterion of 1000 for all impact conditions. A soft headform did not produce significantly lower accelerations. There is a variation of test results among helmets of the same model which are attributable to manufacturing and materials variations. Impact tests with the Royal Industries drop frame assembly generally have lower acceleration dwell times than tests with the SwRI drop frame assembly.