Apparel – Guard or protector – For wearer's head
Patent
1986-08-19
1989-08-08
Schroeder, Werner H.
Apparel
Guard or protector
For wearer's head
2414, A42B 302
Patent
active
048539805
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
DESCRIPTION
1. Technical Field
This invention relates to a protective buffer padding element, particularly for use with a crash helmet, including a deformable blister.
2. Background Art
In many situations, often connected with the practice of some sport (motoring, motorcycling, skiing, hockeyplaying, American football-playing, etc.), but occasionally also of some trades (work at construction yards, mines, etc.) or else, where the use of crash helmet may be a commendable, if not altogether compulsory, measure an improved protective buffer padding element is needed.
Crash helmets usually have different characteristics dependent on their intended applications, but they all include a deformable inner padding which is mainly directed to absorb at least part of the impact energy and transfer the rest of it to the head in as gradual a manner as possible. To this basic requisite, there are other considerations, of secondary importance from the safety point of view but just as strongly felt, such as comfort, adaptability to varying anatomical features, economy of manufacture, etc.
Known helmets employ a range of padding types. A first type comprises paddings formed from deformable solid materials, mostly polyurethanes. A second type comprises elements composed of deformable blisters containing either air, gases, or liquids, and being variously interconnected together.
With paddings of the first type, the impact energy is absorbed by elastic deformation of the material. Helmets equipped with paddings of this type become useless after being subjected to a shock and only suit, therefore, applications where a shock represents an incidental, quite extraordinary, event, as with motor sports.
Paddings of the second type usually have a first tier of air-filled elastic blisters interconnected into sets, each set being inflatable and deflatable independently of the others, and a second tier of damping blisters filled with a liquid (usually ethylene glycol), being each separate from the others and provided with a respective elastic pouch whereinto, on compression, the liquid flows at a high load loss (and, hence, absorption of energy) and whence it flows out owing to the elastic action of the pouch. These paddings undergo no permanent damage during an impact and the helmet can be re-used. Therefore, they are suitable for applications involving frequent shocks constituting quite an ordinary event, as with American football.
Furthermore, with such paddings, one crash helmet can fit different head sizes. In fact, by inflating the air blisters more or less by means of a specially provided pump supplied separately, the pressure exerted on each region of the head can be varied, thereby the helmet may also be adapted to suit the user's own preferences.
Actually, however, the degree of protection afforded by a helmet incorporating paddings of these type changes according to the dimensions and anatomical configuration of the head.
Where the blisters oppose no appreciable resistance to deformation (e.g. with bellows-type blisters), a larger size head would be less well protected because surrounded by relatively "deflated" blisters which are so highly deformable as to result easily in a "bottoming out" situation, that is contact of the head with the helmet outer shell.
By contrast, in the most frequent instance of blisters having more resistant walls to deformation, difficulties would be encountered with smaller size heads; in this case, in fact, blisters would have to be inflated at a high pressure in order to clamp on the head at the usual initial pressure. The padding would thus be extremely stiff and little effective to absorb a shock.
Like considerations apply also to the varying anatomical configurations of the heads; given the widely varying shapes and proportions of a head, it would be often found that different areas are protected by different thicknesses of the padding, which results in the same problems of protection differences outlined above.
Conventionally, such differences can only be obviated by providing a range of hel
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patent: 4535977 (1985-08-01), Strong
patent: 4566137 (1986-01-01), Grooding
patent: 4589405 (1986-05-01), Hemmeter
Schroeder Werner H.
Sonda S.r.l.
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