Injury data from unhelmeted football head impacts evaluated against critical strain tolerance curves

Abstract

Concussion is a prevalent injury in collision and contact sports, but the biomechanics of concussion has mainly been assessed for helmeted head impacts. Concussion and no-injury cases had previously been reconstructed using rigid body simulations from a larger video database of unhelmeted head impact cases from Australian rules football, rugby union and rugby league. The KTH finite element human head model was used to simulate the 27 concussion and 13 no-injury cases, and the maximum principle strain levels in the corpus callosum were evaluated. The rotational kinematics and strain levels were compared to critical strain tolerance curves and reconstructed pedestrian impacts from the literature. It was found that the 5% critical strain tolerance curve equated to a maximum principal strain level of approximately 0.20 and was associated with concussive impacts involving prolonged loss of consciousness. The results suggest rotational kinematics above 4500 rad/s² and 33 rad/s for peak resultant angular acceleration and maximum change in resultant angular velocity, respectively, as tentative tolerance levels for concussion involving prolonged loss of consciousness. Cases involving short duration or no loss of consciousness had similar rotational kinematics and strain levels in the corpus callosum, suggesting that these injuries are of similar severity. The findings support the hypothesis that sports concussions share some biomechanical characteristics with diffuse axonal injury.