Protecting Warfighters with Lightweight Bio-Inspired Cellular Helmets Designed for Mitigating Blast Induced Brain Injury and Enhancing Comfort Across Multiple Environments

Cortex Dynamix LLC proposes to collaborate with the University of Texas at Arlington to investigate the feasibility of advanced 3D-printed lattice structures to be used in helmets, aimed at mitigating the risk of blast-induced traumatic brain injury across various thermal environments. By making use of bio-inspired phenomena, we aim to enhance the protection metrics critical for preventing brain injury by studying our proposed design at a building block level. Cortex Dynamix will be responsible for the design and simulation of the proposed system while UT Arlington will be responsible for the manufacturing, experimental testing, and damage analysis. Cortex Dynamix will conduct explicit finite element analysis to show the feasibility of the proposed system across multiple thermal environments. Once validated via UT Arlingtonĺs preliminary experiments, Cortex Dynamix will conduct parametric analysis and computational optimization via machine learning on the design variables determined to have the most influence on the output performance parameters, transmitted pressure and acceleration. UT Arlington will conduct further experiments on the optimized design, after which Cortex Dynamix will assess the feasibility of the proposed system for preventing blast-induced brain injury. This evaluation will include the feasibility of optimizing key design variables to enhance performance and determining the potential for advancing the proposed building block design to a full-scale helmet for Phase II research.á