Evaluation of the blunt thoracic trauma due to baseball impacts – review of the Blunt Criterion

Evaluation of the blunt thoracic trauma due to baseball impacts – review of the Blunt Criterion

Evaluation of the thoracic injury due to blunt impacts during the contact and collision sports activity is crucial for the development and validation of the chest protectors and safety solid sports for the athletes. In the case of young athletes, proper chest protectors can avoid not only severe chest trauma but also protect them from the sudden death due to commotio-cordis. In order to evaluate the thoracic injury in terms of known engineering parameters (Viscous Criterion), non-linear finite element simulations were carried out by impacting FE model of the thorax surrogate (MTHOTA- Mechanical THOrax for Trauma Assessment) with a synthetic baseball and a synthetic baseball of the same size and weight at the impact speed of 10 – 45 m/s (with an increment of 5 m/s). Synthetic baseball and soft-core baseball produced VCmax = 1 m/s at the impact speed of 27.9 m/s and 30.7 m/s respectively. For both sports ball impact cases, Blunt Criterion (which is commonly used as non-lethal munitions design criterion that takes only kinetic energy of the projectile and weight & geometry of the thorax into consideration) was evaluated for all impact cases of two types of baseballs. Results have revealed the projectile specificity of the Blunt Criterion.

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