A Multi-Purpose Novel Biofidelic Head Surrogate to Evaluate Head Protection Systems from Ballistic, Blast, and Blunt Exposures

The goal of this project is to design, fabricate, and demonstrate an easily reproducible and biofidelic head and neck surrogate to evaluate head protection systems from ballistic, blast, and blunt exposures/threats. This program will also investigate possible enhancements to helmet evaluations relating to head and neck interactions under loading. The CFDRC/APL team has extensive experience developing surrogate solutions to measure these threats and proposes creating a multi-purpose design which can be adapted to measure each threat of interest. In Phase I, a comprehensive requirements investigation led to a solution space where a trade-off analysis of the initial design’s features was made and a preliminary head/neck surrogate design was developed which leveraged our team’s past work. Phase II will finalize materials and sensor choices for the neck and three variants of the head resulting in a full scale Common Head Surrogate (CHS) prototype to be delivered during the program. Parametric simulations on the CHS variants will be performed to predict loadings to help guide sensor choice and to explore use-case methodology for experimental testing. Incorporating COTS sensor solutions and easily reproducible materials for the head/neck surrogate, the overall cost of the head/neck surrogate can be kept low to allow repeated testing.