The City College of New York English 21007: Writing for Engineers Semester: Spring 2018

Proposal:

Concussion Helmets

Instructor: Maryam Alikhani Students:
Handell Vigniero Hasibul Hasan Cristian Lema Rhona Kosumi

Introduction

Football is a very prominent sport in the United States. It is present in every state and has leagues starting from just 5 or 6 years old. Throughout the years, the football helmet has been revised and improved to maximize safety. It started off as just moleskin until eventually, it upgraded to a leather material. Then, the first plastic helmet with inside padding was introduced in 1949. These helmets were then reinforced with a facemask. The current helmet being used today uses a polycarbonate shell with foam padding on the inside of the helmet.

Problem/Need

Regardless of the advances in helmet technology made to date, concussions have become a recurring problem in the NFL. A concussion is a type of traumatic brain injury. Symptoms include loss of consciousness, confusion, memory loss, dizziness, double or blurry vision, and nausea. A football player is 300% more likely to experience a second concussion after already having experienced one. Repeated head trauma such as concussions may lead to the development of a neurodegenerative disease called Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE. A person with CTE experiences rage, impulsiveness, depression, confusion, and memory loss. Ultimately, CTE leads to advanced dementia. Out of all the NFL players that donated their brains to scientific research, CTE was found in 99% of them. Exactly 177 of 202 deceased football players, including high school and college, were diagnosed with CTE. The NFL is a professional organization with rules dictating the proper area to make tackles. This rule is directly associated with trying to reduce the number of concussions that players endure. As evident in the studies, their efforts are in vain. Football is also played by non-professionals and students that lack the discipline to stick to the tackle box. Therefore, they are even more susceptible to being concussed and developing CTE as they suffer repeated head trauma. It is a problem that more advanced helmet technology can reduce drastically.

Objectives

Our solution is an innovative concussion helmet. The new innovation will be engineered and developed to solve every aspect of our current helmets. Our primary mission is to create a technology aimed to reduce brain injury and concussion. This innovation holds next level technology with the power to provide our athletes utmost protection while engaging in football. It is a revolutionary helmet that will change how athletes play the game forever.

Plan of Action

We plan on finishing this Helmet within a year. The designing process is going to take the least amount of time, about 2 months total. We are working with Neuro Engineers, Neuropsychologists, Biomedical Engineers, IT professionals and Computer Scientists to perfect it. The next step and the most important one is Testing part. It is going to take about 4 months to test everything that our engineers have created. Our samples of helmets will be tested in professional labs for strength, durability, size, drop effect, and condition. Once the helmet passes all of these tests described above, we would be able to continue to the next step. Additionally, they will be tested in Motorcyclists, Bikers, Skiers before we proceed to the Football players. Last step and the final step is creating the helmet, where six engineers and 15 employers will be working on it. When this step is finalized, we will have Marketing people to help us with promoting our brand new smart helmets to the market, as well as helping us collaborate with NFL.

Management Plan
Materials and Implementations
The fundamental aspect of the concussion helmet is the new polymer. The first

agenda of creating this helmet is to create a better and more enhanced polymer. This new polymer will be able to absorb much more energy than the current polymer and

styrofoam material used for football helmets. The polymer will be completely redesigned and restructured in the helmet to reduce impact during the collision.
Current helmets will be redesigned to have an increased field of view. Field of view is the open observable area one can see through their eyes. An average human has a field of view of 220 degrees. However, most helmets are restricted to about 200 degrees. We will increase the field of view to the maximum degree one is capable of viewing (about 220 degrees).

The helmet will also be much lighter in weight. The current football helmets used are about five lbs and higher. However, we will implement new and innovative designs to make the helmets significantly lighter. They lightest helmets will be around two to three pounds.

In order to ensure safety at the most optimal level, this revolutionary helmet will have some technical aspects such as smart impact polymer sensors and health monitor sensors. The impact polymer sensors are thin strips that will be added to the interior wall of the helmets to detect any collision. Upon player collisions, coaches and doctors on the sidelines will be informed about the significance of the collision. Depending on the seriousness of the collision, each collision will be reported to the sidelines by a numerical value. Then, coaches and staff will decide whether or not to keep the players on the field due to health risks. The health monitor strip will be added to send information to the sidelines about the heartbeat, pressure, and other pertinent health information.
These implementations will produce a helmet which will be lighter, safer and more comfortable to wear.

Composition

The helmet is composed of five layers. The outer layer is a hard carbon fibers layer that provides a hard, secure structure for the helmet. This layer is subject to the most impact so it is significant this layer keeps the whole helmet from breaking apart. The next layer works with the outermost layer to reduce the force the brain feels after

the collision. This layer (made from the new polymer) is built and structured in a way that it acts like a car bumper. It helps deform the helmet to mitigate most of the impact after the collision. Next layer is composed of different sensors such as the impact and health monitor sensor. The last two layers are made of polypropylene foam and different polymers to provide comfort for players.

Costs and Time

The project will take about one year and it will be completed in four phases: planning, designing, testing and creating. The costs are distributed in six main categories. The first agenda is designing a new polymer which will cost about 50,000 dollars. Next, creating and implementing the tech aspects of the helmet will costs about 150,000 dollars. Next agenda is the testing where we will run tests to make sure the helmets do not break upon impact. We will also run tests to make sure the helmets are capable of mitigating the impact endured by the helmets; this will reduce the amount of player injury and concussion. This testing process will cost about 5,000 dollars. Next part is the marketing and business aspect. This part will cost about 20,000 dollars. Marketing and business will be easy for this project because this project is very desirable. After lab testing, it will be easy to market these helmets because of just how unsafe current helmets are. Most of the money will go towards advertising to NFL and college football players. Then, 50,000 dollars will be reserved for other costs that might not have been considered. Lastly, the most significant cost is the salary of the engineers and staff. There will be about six engineers from different majors such as mechanical, neural, electrical, computer, computer science, biomedical engineering. The rest will be staffs such as graduate students and interns. We project that the salary will cost about three million dollars over the course of a year. This number is subject to change as we move forward with the plan because it is such a large number.
Future of Helmets

The football helmet has become more than just a piece of safety equipment. As a device that’s worn by every player on every down, we want the function of the football

helmet to have the unique potential to profoundly impact players and fans—and shape the future of the game. The new features will further elevate player performance. It will have embedded better impact sensors that alert trainers and coaches about on-field collisions and heads-up display (HUD) facemask visors with front and rear cameras to capture the game from every angle. HUDs can help players elevate their game through augmented reality, real-time game data, and personal health performance like oxygen levels, heart rate, blood pressure and etc. It will also allow the player to have a matchup analysis with opponents and be able to see their proficiency like speed, coverage, tackling and catching. What is even more fascinating is the exterior sound control technology to mitigate crowd noise and amplify selective on-field sound in our helmets. Our data and statistics have shown that players get distracted often by the noises around and this technology is going to help them concentrated on the game and perform better. Our goal is not only safety but also to design and improve the game of professional football—from the performance of players to experience fans to (ultimately) the success of the league.

Conclusion

The idea of our smart polymer fiber is to increase safety as well as affordability. Being able to enhance cheap materials with our smart polymers enables maximum efficiency and quality. Youth and adults gain a sense of reassurance to freely do activities without risk of major injury. In the future, there are so many new possibilities to improve technology. Helmets could have impact sensors installed with medical technology to inform doctors of injuries on a player. This allows players to improve physical health, performance, and safety. Developing this idea helped us as a group become firm on a stance and speak on it publicly. We as a group have grown together through our teamwork and in the process of developing this idea, have learned how to mix our different ideas together and come to a compromise where result shows each individual’s thought.

References

Siler, W. (2015). The New Materials That Are Revolutionizing Helmet Safety Right Now. Gizmodo. Retrieved from https://gizmodo.com/helmet-safety-is-being-revolutionized- right-now-1692246906.

Ghizal, R., Fatima, G. R., Srivastava, S. (2014). Smart Polymers and Their Applications. Semantic Scholar. Retrieved from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ 65a7/3302051feea5041fa4595f3fe21e632722ba.pdf.

Nakatsuka, A. S., Yamamoto, L. G. (2014). External Foam Layers to Football Helmets Reduce Head Impact Severity. Hawaii J Med Public Health. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.g ov/pmc/articles/PMC4142580/.

Stuart, M., Minko, S. (2010). Emerging Applications of Stimuli-Responsive Polymer Materials. Northwestern Scholars. Retrieved from https://www.scholars.northwestern. edu/en/publications /emerging-applications-of-stimuli-responsive-polymer-materials.