Future Helmets

Thomas_S_Hunterson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VDeJ7rLUYU

This stuff, D30, looks pretty interesting. I know personally I would wear a lid made out of it if it could be built into, say, a beanie.

CheGuedara

The potential for lightweight mtb armour is enormous - bet Dainese is wishing they came up with that stuff!

Where can I buy shares...

JacksonHeightsOwn

wasnt there some guy on the dragons den that had the rights to that studd throughout britain and europe, he was planning on making protective cases for laptops and ipods

i remember 2 dragons got out really early, only to then hear your man had the rights to this stuff, i bet they felt like proper ejits after wards, magical stuff

droidus

You can buy these already. Ignite and Ribcap amongst other brands. Theres some skiing shops in Dublin that sell em.

Clandog

Thats a fantastic video, probably the funniest I have seen in a long time....solid!!

cdaly_

I would say it wouldn't be much help as a helmet as your skull is already hard enough. The usual head injury is a concussion as a result of your brain bouncing around inside your skull. Traditional helmets protect by deforming and absorbing the energy of an impact. If this D30 stuff gets hit it goes rigid and presumably passes on the impact energy to your skull.

Good for elbow/knees tho...

tomasrojo

cdaly_ wrote: »

I would say it wouldn't be much help as a helmet as your skull is already hard enough. The usual head injury is a concussion as a result of your brain bouncing around inside your skull. Traditional helmets protect by deforming and absorbing the energy of an impact. If this D30 stuff gets hit it goes rigid and presumably passes on the impact energy to your skull.

Good for elbow/knees tho...

I think, in fact, the worst brain injuries are a result of abrupt rotation of the skull, resulting in diffuse axonal injury. These are the injuries most likely to result in death or severe impairment. Focal, as opposed to diffuse, impacts are frequently mild in effect.

I was just in the last hour reading about woodpeckers (yes, really), and it turns out that their restricting the angles through which their beaks strike the wood to limit the impacts to focal impacts is the reason they can use their beaks as drilling implements over their entire lifetime without sustaining brain injury.

I guess the fact that this new material mentiond above allows you to make a smaller helmet would be a plus, since the a larger effective head of traditionally helmeted person increases the possiblity of rotational injuries. I imagine that a compressible liner would still be desirable though, for reducing the severity of linear impacts.

A better, smaller liner that also minimises rotation of the skull relative to the neck would be a real breakthrough in helmets.