In quest to stop debilitating traumatic mind accidents, new foam materials rises to the highest

From falls to soccer tackles, most blows to the top happen at odd angles. And people impacts set off simultaneous linear and rotational head motions. The rotating motion particularly causes shear pressure, which is particularly damaging to the mind.

A brand new light-weight foam materials may take most or all of that pressure off the mind.

Developed by College of Wisconsin–Madison engineers, the brand new materials—a vertically aligned carbon nanotube foam—can dissipate an unlimited quantity of rotational kinetic power from an influence. And as a helmet lining materials, it may mitigate, and even forestall, traumatic mind accidents by weakening rotational kinetic power earlier than it reaches the mind.

In truth, the brand new materials is 30 instances higher at absorbing shear pressure than the foam at present utilized in U.S. army fight helmet liners. The workforce described the fabric and its distinctive properties in a paper printed Dec. 7, 2023, within the journal Experimental Mechanics.

“This materials exhibits nice promise for enabling new helmets which are drastically higher at stopping concussions,” says Ramathasan Thevamaran, a UW–Madison assistant professor of mechanical engineering who led the analysis.

Why it really works

Presently, some helmets try to scale back rotational movement from impacts by using a layer that permits a sliding movement to happen between the wearer’s head and the helmet’s outer shell. Nonetheless, Thevamaran says these shifting layers do not dissipate power from shear pressure; even worse, they have an inclination to jam after they’re severely compressed—in different phrases, following a blow.

Because it would not depend on sliding layers, the brand new materials sidesteps these shortcomings.

Even higher, when it is compressed, the fabric will get unusually higher at accommodating shear and dissipating power from an influence, Thevamaran says.

This advance builds on his earlier analysis on vertically aligned carbon nanotube foams, by which his workforce demonstrated the fabric’s extraordinary shock-absorbing talents. The fabric consists of carbon nanotubes—carbon cylinders only one atom thick in every layer—which are fastidiously organized into intently packed cylinder buildings. The fabric’s novel structure, which has distinctive structural options throughout a number of size scales, provides the fabric its distinctive properties.

As well as, the researchers just lately demonstrated that their vertically aligned carbon nanotube foams exhibited excellent thermal conductivity and diffusivity, which might allow a helmet liner made from the fabric to maintain the wearer’s head cool in sizzling environments.

Coupled with its thinness, that cooling functionality places the new materials on par with graphite foams and makes it engaging for purposes the place much less weight is necessary. Past helmet liners, the fabric is also utilized in digital packaging and digital methods to each defend in opposition to shocks and hold electronics cool.