Sustainable Design for Passive Safety of Sports Equipment

This thesis project concerned passive safety and sustainable assessment of protective polymer-based foam devices, actually installed in Sports Area, and it aimed to investigate regulations, severity of injuries, material absorption properties and testing procedures, in order to propose a new approach. Thus, a focus on international Sports injury statistics it has been done and mostly frequent accident mechanisms, falls and head collisions, highlighted. It has been also possible, through a study on Biomechanical issues, to comprehend evaluation methods of concussion thresholds and brain trauma degree. From product design process point of view, Ecodesign principles were studied in order to minimize consumptions and emissions in a product life-cycle vision and Robust Design methods were applied in order to maximize product performances through a proper evaluation of design parameters. Sports area standards, provided by international organizations, were compared in order to extract testing procedures and related technical requirements. Therefore, a flexible impact testing apparatus was designed and built in Sports Equipment and Technology department of Chemnitz University of Technology: by replacing the falling striker, in fact, it has been possible to comply with the American ASTM F1292, the European EN 1177 and EN 913 specifications, and then realize the so-called, in scientific literature, “Low-velocity” impact experiments. Afterwards, three experimental program phases were followed and a huge number of Polyethylene foam architectures were tested according to the previous American and European testing protocols. Due to lacks in EN 913 and EN 1177 specifications, a new testing method was proposed by considering friction influences in guidance system of the apparatus; by adopting an ergonomic missile; by a joint monitoring on the characteristic parameters during impact tests, that are acceleration peak, Head Injury Criterion (HIC) and critical fall height. Main goals achieved during this research could allow sports area technicians and responsible in making proper evaluation concerns the selection of several protective devices, and could improve the safety level of sports participants during their practice.