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Military Helmet Design Contributes To Brain Damage
BuzzSkyline writes "Improvements in helmets have helped modern soldiers survive bullets and blasts that would have killed them in past wars. But increasing numbers of soldiers are suffering long lasting brain damage from explosions, partly as a result of what appears to be a flaw in helmet designs. Although the blast itself may not accelerate the brain inside a soldier's head enough to cause injury, shockwaves that make it through the space between a helmet and a soldier's head can cause the skull to flex, leading to ripples in the skull that can create damaging pressures in the brain. Simulations that relied on 'code originally designed to simulate how a detonated weapon rattles a building or tank' could lead to new helmets that reduce the traumatic brain injuries that many soldiers suffer as a result of improvised explosive devices and other moderate-sized blasts. The research is due to be published in Physical Review Letters, but a pre-print of the entire article is currently available on the Physics ArXiv."
Green military uniforms have also been observed to be a cause of brain damage, proportional to the number of stars on the uniform.
Ezekiel 23:20
War really does lead to some of our race's biggest advances.
Although they did fail to consider the motivating potential of porn as well. Stupid Shadows...
Is it possible to design the helmets in such a way that prevents this? If not, it might be a necessary evil. I would rather run the risk of TBI than have my head shot off or something, honestly. It might just be a sad side effect of our need to have soldiers.
+++ Divide By Cucumber Error. Please Reinstall Universe And Reboot +++
Helmets which "have helped modern soldiers survive bullets and blasts that would have killed them in past wars" are being accused of causing brain damage.
I guess boxing gloves cause brain damage, too? Or maybe it's boxing that causes brain damage, and the gloves reduce the risk...
Now, if they can make better helmets that reduce the risk of brain damage even further, props to them. That doesn't mean the current generation of helmets are "causing" brain damage.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
This is considered a flaw in design? I was unaware that these helmets were designed to protect against shockwaves as oppoesed to simply projectiles. "Military Helmet Design Contributes To Brain Damage" makes it sound like the helmet itself is inflicting brain damage, no?
I'm not following the title. An explosion near the head causes brain damage. Wearing a helmet mitigates the effects of the explosion. A military helmet is not maximally effective in mitigating the effects. How did we arrive at a military helmet causes brain damage?
You have been warned.
I tought helmets were designed to protect from debri and flying objects caused by explosions, not the shockwave from 2 pounds of C-4 lying around.
What a headline. Actually, overall, I would think that helmets reduce injury and death. Both in combat and civilian arenas. Just because an inefficiency in military helmet design exists is no reason to say that "Helmet Design Contributes to Brain Damage". As compared to what? Taking shrapnel or a bullet without a helmet? Now the article does suggest that the helmet may increase skull deformation from pressure waves secondary to the helmet design. But the authors admit that these are preliminary results and may or may not relate to the final outcome; TBI. Still, if this line of research pans out, it could lead to some real improvement in head protection. Civilian and military. I just hate misleading, sensational headlines...
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It causes less damage if you use them, even if some scientist found a small flaw in their design. I think a bullet to the head would cause more problems then you brain taking a hit because your helmet stopped the bullet.
I would also be more worried about the person shooting at you.
Its not my fault, someone put a wall in my way.
There was just an article earlier today (Orange Goo) about a material that helps absorb shock, so why not line the inside of the helmets with the stuff?
If you can't beat them, embrace and extend them.
IED = improvised explosive device. As opposed to an explosive device made on a production line somewhere. The military loves acronyms even more than the rest of government, so I doubt there's any Orwellian reason for the name.
Certainly it's possible, they just need better shock absorption. The current design transmits too much of the shock to the skull.
This problem is actually caused by the helmet's method of not transmitting shock to the skull. FTA:
So the trick is keeping the overpressure out of the helmet, while keeping it separated from the skull. Perhaps a dual helmet design; Rigid outer shell to absorb and deflect impact, and a second separate inner covering to resist overpressure. Either that, or in place of ACH pads, some type of system relying on fluid dynamics to redirects force forward, out the face of the helmet, rather than inward toward the skull.
RTFA.
Free Martian Whores!
Actually, while there is plenty of military doublespeak that could be dispensed with, "IED" I am perfectly happy with. "Improvised" is a worthwhile adjective to use in this context, because the improvised devices do typically have different characteristics from the closest equivalent professionally made devices, so you want to use that or some other adjective (you could use "home made" if you like, but that sounds like you're talking about pie, not weaponry). And since the term covers a range of blast, shrapnel, and incendiary devices, "explosive device" pretty much covers it. For once, it's actually a concise and descriptive acronym.
Oh no... it's the future.
I remember reading a similar article about motorcycle helmets, which said that the incident of brain trauma was higher in helmeted riders versus helmetless. Same reason - the rigid helmet transmitted shockwave straight through the skull to the brain, where the facial structure absorbed a lot of the shock in unhelmeted riders.
So the choice seemed to be pretty and brain damaged, or ugly and smart.
I think they've redesigned the helmets since then.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Actually, there's some very good reasons for calling them IEDs. IED stands for Improvised Explosive Device, of course. What this means is that the explosive device in question is not standard. This matters when it comes to disarming/making them safe.
If a EOD guy comes across an unexploded MK82, he knows precisely how to disarm it - it's standardized. Same deal with most land mines*, claymore devices, unmodified artillery shells**, and the rest of the world's standard military munitions. We even have books on foreign country's stuff, including Russian and old USSR weapons.
Each IED, even if from the same maker, is far more unique, presenting unique challanges when it comes to disarming them.
Oh, and being designated as a land mine doesn't mean a 'large enough' payload, it means it's buried in the ground with an appropriate sensor/detonator to explode when something's over it. Most are pressure sensitive, some anti-vehicle types have magnetic detonators.
Bombs are generally assumed to be dropped out of planes, but then I'm Air Force.
*Though booby-trapping can be an issue with these.
**Many are converted into IEDs via non-conventional detonation systems in Iraq/Afghanistan.
I don't read AC A human right
(you could use "home made" if you like, but that sounds like you're talking about pie, not weaponry).
If you're talking about a pie made by me, then there's not a whole lot of difference.
Someday I really should release my autobiographical NIN-parody, Terrible Pie.
The enemies of Democracy are
shockwaves that make it through the space between a helmet and a soldier's head
Either Jarhead isn't wearing his helmet properly or there IS a major flaw in the design. This kind of thing is mentioned everywhere.
Have you ever worn a bike helmet that was 3 sizes too large? How effective was it? Heres an experiment, place a ball on the ground and smack it with your hand. Notice how much it bounces, moves, etc etc. Now take that ball and hold it 2 feet off the ground. Now hit it, and see how much more it bounces.
If the helmet has an inch of gap, its no surprise that helmets are hitting troops with more effective damage then if they were wearing nothing at all.
But I'm in the military, and I'd rather brain damage than brain splattage.
QamuIs Heg qaq law' lorvIs yInqaq puS
I'll bet there's an army manual somewhere which says so. Probably if the artillery shells are used as artillery shells, they're not considered IEDs, but if they're rigged as a claymore, they are. Sort of like if you somehow hooked a billiard ball to your mouse to make a trackball, you'd have an IPD -- improvised pointing device.
When I wore the Army helmets in basic training, I noticed this design flaw. Basically, there's no padding or shock absorbing foam in the helmet. (there's a redesigned helmet that is in use now that has a little bit of padding but not like a bike helmet). Sometimes, soldiers would playfully rifle butt each other in the head. I noticed whenever this happened to me that the rigid helmet would let most of the force of the blow right through, and it would make a loud ringing sound. Evidently, that's pretty bad when an IED goes off.
Of course, the ultimate solution is to put infantry drones in the blast zone of IED, not human beings. Unfortunately for all the soldiers who have died, the tech won't be ready for another 20-30 years.
They also make it possible to hit the head. Without gloves you'd break your hands if you stood there punching at somebody's head. In the old days of bare-knuckle boxing most of the blows were to the body. There were a lot of bruised ribs but hardly anybody died.
No sig today...
I think a lot of this stems from the way the current helmet is fitted to the soldiers head. (Yes, I am a soldier, 18th Airborne Corp, Ft Bragg, NC)
1 - The older Kevlar helmet was fitted to your head with a "sweat band" strapped to the inside of the helmet, which could be adjusted to fit your head exactly.
2 - The newer ACH (Advanced Combat Helmet) is fitted with velcro backed pads which attach inside the helmet.
Let me say now that it is *very* common for CIF (where you get issued your equipment) to be out of your size and give you the next size up. With the older Kevlar (case 1 above) you could still fit the sweat band to fit your head, securing the helmet. With the ACH (case 2 above) if the helmet is too big, the pads will be loose on your head, and the helmet will rattle around on your head when concussions occur nearby.
In the first world war German soldiers found that the spikes on their pointy helmets tended to get caught on things like tree branches, bunker roofs and occasionally each other.
The Bavarians came up with an ingenious solution - put the spike on the inside. As an added bonus it stopped them falling off.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Thus it may be possible to solve the problem, but not without tradeoffs...
So then the soldier is stuck with a helmet that is even more bulky and weighs ten pounds and has a tendency to trap a lot of body heat unless an active liquid cooling system is deployed. And after it's deployed, you then see a lot of soldiers not wearing them because they prefer to have more mobility and endurance on the battlefield.
In other words, sometimes one compromise is still better than another.
My read was exactly the same. The helmets are now so much better at protecting heads than anything ever has been in the past, that we're having to model air pressure caused skull flex in order to find something to make better. That's fantastic! Not too long ago the trauma was more likely to be a piece of a bomb going through the brain that caused the damage.
And yeah -- anything they can do to make them better is a good thing, but lets applaud how far they've come.
The only thing I'd add, is that if we could find a way to have less soldiers in the way of bombs and bullets, we could be less aggressive on helmet designs too. Ah well.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln