Designing, manufacturing, testing, and modeling motorcycle helmets using hybrid composite systems

Roadside motorcycle accidents resulting in brain injury and ultimate death have become an important problem worldwide. Protection of motorcycle riders is an essential goal for motorcycle helmet manufacturers in designing helmets that minimize head injuries and fatalities. Kevlar® and carbon fiber-based materials are composites that are most often considered to absorb energy properly during a collision. Due to their extraordinary mechanical, electrical, and thermal properties and lightweight structure, they are widely used materials in various industries including defense, aerospace, automotive, sports, biomedical, and optics. In the present study, nanoclays (NCs) dispersed in epoxy resins at different weight percentages (0 to 10 wt%) were incorporated with dry Kevlar® and carbon fiber fabrics through a wet-layup process, and then cured under a vacuum at room temperature to produce Kevlar®-carbon fiber/epoxy hybrid composites. The prepared five-ply composite panels were impact tested using a low-velocity impactor, and then C-scanned before and after impact tests. During these tests, the impact force vs. displacement, impact force vs. time, and impact energy values of the composite panels were analyzed and compared. C-scans of the damaged composite panels were analyzed for damage area and depth. Test results prove that the absorbed impact energy of the motorcycle helmet meets the requirements and regulations for Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) 218. During a collision event, it is essential to understand motorcycle helmet kinematics and injury mechanisms by examining the biomechanical responses. In this study, helmet impact analyses with a head-neck form of (AM 50th-THUMS) were carried in the finite element (FE) LS-DYNA workbench to explore the head injury parameters in a motorcycle rider. In this study, the modeling and simulations were investigated in LS-DYNA, ANSYS, and the National Institute for Aviation Research (NIAR) composites laboratory.

Author

• Alamir, Mohammed Abdullah

Identifier

hdl:10057/22486

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:soar.wichita.edu:10057/22486