This report details the results of tests made on a headband designed to protect car occupants in a crash. Tests were performed in a manner such that the headband's effectiveness could be compared with the requirements of the United States Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 201. In these tests a free motion headform was launched at a beam that simulated a structure of a car's interior. The stiffness of the beam was varied, and the headform was fired, first, without any protection, and second, with prototype headbands made of either 70 g/1 EPP or 50 g/1 EPP. By comparing the impacts in these configurations we found that the headband absorbed significant amounts of energy, reduced peak loads and kept the impact within acceptably safe limits as measured by the Head Injury Criterion. This study showed that the headband similar to that tested would offer significant head protection in frontal impacts. This could offer safety advantages to occupants of older vehicles who otherwise would not benefit from recent advances in occupant protection and also to occupants of more recent vehicles who might be seeking supplementary safety devices. (Author/publisher)
Abstract