Patent ID: 10197484

Abstract:
This patent describes devices and methods to evaluate and compare the effectiveness of protective equipment in providing protection to players of contact sports, and to determine if a given protective product (pad) is compliant with a specified performance standard. To simulate the impacts experienced by these players, a pad-protected specially modified and instrumented manikin is impacted with solid loads of various weights at various speeds. The impacts are designed to model the impact forces and impact times encountered in typical game collisions. For each impact, measurements are made of the force exerted onto the pad, and the parts of this force that are transmitted through the pad onto various locations on the manikin, as a function of time. Five numbers that quantify the ability of each pad to protect the user are extracted from these measured force verses time data: (1) the maximum force applied on the pad, (2) the average applied force, (3) the maximum force measured under the pad, (4) the sum of the maximum forces measured under the pad, and (5) the ratio of the rebound load speed and the incident load speed. For a given impact, the pad that reduces the magnitudes of these quantities the most is the pad that provides the greatest measure of safety for the game players.