Abstract

Although head injuries in football having approximately the same incidence as in American football and ice hockey, head protectors are barely used for prophylaxis. A detailed human head-neck model including force elements describing the material behaviour of human soft tissue structures such as ligaments, tendons, cartilage layers, intervertebral discs and muscles has been developed using multi-body system (MBS) modelling techniques to investigate the effectiveness of commercial headgear. For ball-head impacts at ball velocity of about the simulations calculate a Head Impact Power (HIP) index of 4.1 kW resulting in a five percent injury risk for concussion. When using headgear the resulting HIP-value comes to 3.91 kW meaning that the reduction of the injury risk is very small. Verf.-Referat