Development and testing of production prototypes of a protective headband for car occupants

Abstract

This report details the results of tests made on a headband designed to protect car occupants in a crash. The tests were performed in a manner such that the headband’s effectiveness could be compared with the requirements of the United States Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 201. That standard requires a certain level of head protection for the occupants of the vehicle from the upper interior of the car. The standard stipulates that a free motion headform be fired against the interior components of the car at a speed of up to 24 km/h. The requirement is that a modified value of the Head Injury Criterion, HIC(d), be less than 1000. In these tests a free motion headform was launched at a beam that simulated a structure of a car’s interior. The stiffness of the beam was varied, and the headform was fired, first, without any protection, and second, with prototype headbands made of either 70 g/l EPP or 50 g/l EPP. By comparing the impacts in these configurations we found that the headband absorbed significant amounts of energy, reduced peak loads and kept the impact within acceptably safe limits as measured by the Head Injury Criterion. This study showed that the headband similar to that tested would offer significant head protection in frontal impacts. This could offer safety advantages to occupants of older vehicles who otherwise would not benefit from recent advances in occupant protection and also to occupants of more recent vehicles who might be seeking supplementary safety devices.