Making an impact. Research studies a new side of helmet safety: faceguard failures

Team of Clemson professors, students patents test to make sports helmets safer

The Clemson University Research Foundation (CURF) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded in 1981.

CURF's mission is to advance the research enterprise of Clemson University by supporting faculty and students engaged in research and introducing them to respective industry partners.

This is the second in a series of stories about some of the groundbreaking innovations shepherded by CURF into patents that are changing the world.

There is a large window-lined laboratory in the back of one of Clemson University's most storied buildings, Newman Hall, filled with machines that look like they were extracted straight from Dr. Jekyll's castle. On one wall a contraption made of pullies and wires attached to the ceiling waits to drop objects and measure the impact; in the middle of the room, a giant metal base shakes a pallet of boxes in perpetuity; on the other side of the room sits what looks like a gigantic nut cracker big enough to squish a small car - but the most Medieval-looking area is the bay on the east side of the room full of machines designed to smack heads.

This is the Clemson Headgear Impact Performance (CHIP) Lab, where John DesJardins, a bioengineering professor, and Greg Batt, a food, nutrition, and packaging sciences associate professor, have spent nearly a decade working on a better way to test the strength of sports helmet faceguards.

The performance of faceguards and how it affects a helmet's performance is woefully understudied, says DesJardins, and that's why he and Batt created the CHIP Lab.

John Desjardins holds one of the face masks tested in the Clemson Headgear Impact Performance (CHIP) Lab in Newman Hall.

"The facemask connects to the helmet, and that connection is poorly studied," he explained during a tour of the CHIP Lab on a quiet summer day on campus. "How does the rigidity of the mask affect the impact that you receive? When it gets hit, it spreads out; when it does that, it makes the helmet on your head wider, so it goes flying off. It completely changes the dynamics of the helmet. There are a lot of unknowns, and that's why we decided to step in and bring those problems into the academic world."

DesJardins says the project initially started with a call from Clemson graduate Jay Elmore '98, owner of Green Gridiron in Pendleton, the premier facemask reconditioner for top-level programs in the NFL, CFL, XFL, NCAA, semi-pro, high school and youth organizations.

"He had this machine in his facility in Pendleton and was having trouble on the engineering side keeping it up to date, doing the testing, and finding somebody qualified to operate it who was affordable enough to keep him in business," explains DesJardins. "He said, 'Please, take it!' and donated the machine to us in exchange for us doing free testing for a couple of years. Ever since then, he's been handing us boxes and boxes of facemasks."

Madison Cardinal, a fourth-year Ph.D. student from Clayton, Wisconsin, studying bioengineering (left) and Anthony Marino, a third-year Ph.D. student in bioengineering, from Birmingham, Alabama, attach a fake head to a stand in the CHIP Lab.

Batt says the CHIP Lab tests well over a 1000 masks a year as an ongoing testing service.

"Masks are made to protect from eye injuries, nose injuries, fingers coming through the mask and so on," says Batt, noting there are about a dozen labs nationally that do this kind of testing, but the CHIP Lab is unique. "Students run the show here. They do all the testing and collect the data, and they come from a wide range of degree fields: bioengineering, packaging science, a couple of mechanical engineers, and we even have a physics major right now."

When asked how often facemasks fail, Batt said it's more often than one might think.

"That is an excellent question. We get some of that information from the equipment manager here for Clemson Football, Nick Yarid. He gives us his damaged masks. We might have a dozen and a half from a spring practice that don't pass his test."

Madison Cardinal prepares a helmet to be tested by the CHIP lab's pneumatic cannon.

"A good team will replace all of their masks every year just so they don't have to worry about a potential miss, but that creates waste," says DesJardins. "Also, many masks are over-manufactured. We're looking at that as well. Why would you want to wear something heavier when you can wear something lighter and reduce waste?"

The original machine Elmore donated is a mean-looking device that drops a weighted human mannequin head attached to a guillotine-like blade onto a metal plate.

"It's old-school and very low-tech," says DesJardins. "And it's a destructive test, which is the unfortunate aspect of it. The accelerometers measure the impact, which is not supposed to reach a certain threshold, and the facemask is not supposed to deform or intrude into the face area enough to bash your nose in or something. This test is designed to allow us to understand that, but we determined it's really antiquated."

DesJardins and Batt decided to invent a better, non-destructive way to get the same data.

They solicited for grant money and got a pneumatic impact ram that can smack fake heads in a much more realistic way.

The pneumatic cannon strikes a helmet with a plate at the end of a piston to test the strength of its facemask.

"The NFL has impact standards for all the different orientations of the head and different speeds and for different player positions," says DesJardins, picking up one of the plastic and metal heads used in the machine. "This weighs as much as a human head - about 12 pounds. You can rotate the head and the neck to different positions and angles, and there are accelerometers that measure the impact."

DesJardins points to a large barrel attached by hinges to one side of the machine, "And just to make it super fun, you can rotate this sucker up, and it shoots hockey pucks!"

Using data gathered from whacking thousands of facemasks with the new ram, Batt and Desjardins teamed up with then-Ph.D. student Alex Bina '22, now the director of applied science for the Clemson University Football Program, and invented a novel testing method that can put pressure on a facemask with precision and measure its strength without destroying it. They patented the technique in 2022.

"We thought, 'What are you trying to get out of this test?'" says DesJardins. "Really, it's taking a facemask and finding out how strong and stiff it is. We came up with a new method: a compression test that squishes it down just a little bit - about five millimeters - to determine its strength. You don't need to bash helmets and facemasks in, which is not cheap."

Tanner Bouknight, a junior studying mechanical engineering from Lexington, South Carolina, (right) and Ben McCall, a junior studying bioengineering from Clover, work with the helmet drop test machine in the Clemson Headgear Impact Performance (CHIP) Lab.

CURF, who is the technology transfer and innovation office for Clemson, filed for and received the patent (US Patent# 11,357,281). CURF also recently awarded DesJardins and Batt a Technology Maturation Grant to make a benchtop testing machine that they can market.

"Those are fancy words for, 'You thought of it, now you have to make it," laughs DesJardins.

The hope is the long-term influence of the data collected from their invention will make sports safer for everyone, from kids in pee-wee football to professional football and hockey players.

"Clemson University prides itself on supporting Translational Research, and the CHIP Lab embodies such a commitment," says Bina. "I consider myself blessed because not many graduate students get to work on a multidisciplinary project at the interface between academia and industry. Combining principles of packaging science and bioengineering with industry need and technology transfer support via CURF, Dr. DesJardins and Dr. Batt allowed me to squeeze the most out of my education while developing innovative life-changing technology for a sport we all love."

John DesJardins, distinguished professor of engineering leadership, CU Bioengineering (second from right), and Greg Batt, associate professor and director, Clemson Packaging Dynamics Laboratory (third from right), pose with their students in the Clemson Headgear Impact Performance (CHIP) Lab in Newman Hall, Aug. 29, 2024.

And they're not stopping with facemasks. Batt and DesJardins already have plans to expand their research below the neck and into chest protection for athletes.

"We just received a grant to study commotio cordis, a rare disruption of heart rhythm that occurs as a result of a blow to the area directly over the heart at a critical instant during the cycle of a heartbeat," says Batt. "Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin famously collapsed from it during a Monday Night Football game in 2023."

DesJardins says they just acquired a new instrumented torso that can record the impact force on the chest.

"Chest protection seems to be an important thing, to say the least, so we're going to take that on next."

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