Study Of Helmets With Face Shields

Study Of Helmets With Face Shields.
Adding expression shields to soldiers' helmets could truncate brain damage resulting from explosions, which account for more than half of all combat-related injuries unremitting by US troops, a new study suggests. Using computer models to simulate battlefield blasts and their chattels on brain tissue, researchers learned that the face is the strongest pathway through which an explosion's pressure waves reach the brain. According to the US Department of Defense, about 130000 US repair members deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq have sustained blast-induced injurious brain injury (TBI) from explosions.

The addition of a face shield made with transparent armor statistics to the advanced combat helmets (ACH) worn by most troops significantly impeded direct curse waves to the face, mitigating brain injury, said lead researcher Raul Radovitzky, an confidant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). "We tried to assess the physics of the problem, but also the biological and clinical responses, and bind it all together," said Radovitzky, who is also associate chief honcho of MIT's Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies. "The key thing from our point of view is that we gnome the problem in the news and thought maybe we could make a contribution".

Researching the issue, Radovitzky created computer models by collaborating with David Moore, a neurologist at the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC Moore old MRI scans to simulate features of the brain, and the two scientists compared how the brains would reply to a frontal destroy wave in three scenarios: a head with no helmet, a head wearing the ACH, and a prime minister wearing the ACH plus a face shield. The sophisticated computer models were able to fuse the force of blast waves with skull features such as the sinuses, cerebrospinal fluid, and the layers of gray and whey-faced matter in the brain. Results revealed that without the face shield, the ACH slightly delayed the burst wave's arrival but did not significantly lessen its effect on brain tissue. Adding a face shield, however, considerably reduced forces on the brain.

The study, published online Nov 22, 2010 in the paper Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, contradicts above-mentioned research that suggested that the ACH could decrease brain injury in service members - the most common injury prolonged by soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. "This study really has two key contributions. First, that the ACH doesn't improve a lot for blast protection, and second, but it doesn't make it worse. We are not saying anything dissentious about the ACH, just the opposite. With the helmet, we saw a lot of improvement compared to an unprotected face".

Dr Michael Lipton, companion director of the Gruss Magnetic Resonance Research Center at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, said one of his concerns about the den is that the only quirk modeled was the effect of a blast. "Really, there's no such thing as an isolated blast," Lipton said, explaining that the consequences typically knocks one to the ground or causes the head to hit other objects. "There are devastate waves, but an impact component also. Very commonly, there's a unhurt spectrum of injury. It all depends on the position and proximity of the patient to the blast".

Lipton pointed out that a daring shield wouldn't just help soldiers involved in heavy explosions, but also in smaller blasts that happen on an unimaginative basis. "It's not uncommon for these soldiers to get exposed to multiple blast injuries without being removed from repeated conflict exposure recognized as significant injuries. Protection might even be more efficacious in repeated impacts".

Radovitzky said many details lack to be addressed before a face shield could be integrated into soldiers' helmets. Further research will hub on expanding what's understood about head injuries from blasts. "There are a lot of things I don't infer from from an operational standpoint of a soldier. There's a lot more we need to know your domain name. We are all trying to carry out in the gaps and connect the dots".