An evaluation of material customized modular protective helmets

Helmets are often recommended as primary safety equipment for protecting the head. Several studies have been conducted to test the effectiveness of different impact-absorbing liner materials and their response to high impact loading. The standard helmets have an impact-absorbing liner of a single material, which may not be the best design approach. Hence, the possibility of modular helmet liner design with two different materials has been explored in this study. The chapter presents a preliminary Finite element analysis (FEA) study to evaluate the performance of hard foam, soft foam and a combination of both the foams as impact-absorbing liners for helmets. The results suggest that the hard foam liner showed better performance for high impact loads, while the soft foam liner was more effective for low impact loads. The results also indicated that the modular design-based helmet liners developed using both the hard and soft foam performed better than single foam liners.