NYU Study of Foam Characteristics
Summary: A study at NYU does not conclude that foam is a hidden danger in helmets. Press releases
have distorted the findings to produce sensational headlines.
In August of 2010 NYU produced
this
press release. It concludes that:
"In a counter-intuitive finding, scientists at New York University (NYU) and Polytechnic Institute of New York University
(NYU-Poly) report that the foam used in helmets and other body armor indeed absorbs damage when compressed slowly but can
cause as much injury as a hard object when hit at high speeds." The press release features photos of football
players.
The
abstract of the journal article
reveals that the researchers were testing only syntactic foams, a specialized type of foam not generally used in sports
helmets, although it may be in some military helmets. The foam tested is rate-sensitive, and the press release writers
appear not to understand why that could be beneficial, concluding that if the foam does not give enough in heavy impacts
it could fail to protect. When rate-sensitive foams are properly tuned for a helmet, they provide softer landings for
lesser impacts and stiffen up at higher impact levels to prevent the helmet liner from "bottoming out" and transmitting
all of the energy to the wearer's head.
The press release certainly makes for a sensational headline.
We bought the article. It contains only a scientific report on impacting some syntactic foam in a lab, and how the
failure mechanism changes at different strain rates. The word helmet does not appear. The lab test equipment bears no
relation to helmet test equipment. The foam tested could not be used for football helmets, since it is a one-hit
foam.
We concluded that we had been victimized by a university news room trying to punch up the release of a journal article by
one of their departments.