Collegiate Times

Stefan Duma poses with a youth helmet in front of racks of helmets available for testing in his lab.

Stefan Duma takes the issue of helmet safety head on.

For nearly a decade, the head of the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest University School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences has researched head impacts in football. His research has been covered by The New York Times, ESPN and U.S. News and World Report.

After receiving widespread attention for changing the way college and high school football helmets are rated and reviewed, Duma started a new study with a new group of hard-hitting athletes. However, he had to make sure it was OK with their parents first.

An impacting force

Duma primarily researches military and automobile safety. Despite differences between the fields, he says the same general principles translate between consumer and military products and sports equipment.

“We look at head injuries for a variety of applications,” Duma said. “If you look at automobile safety or you look at military crash events, how we understand injuries in those environments is how we understand sports environments.”

His research with the Tech football team began in the 2003 season. Accelerometers and wireless transmitters were placed in helmets and given out to the players of various positions. The sensors measured the impacts players received during practices and games. 

Working alongside Duma was Steve Rowson, a then-graduate student studying biomedical engineering at Tech. He was working on a dissertation about head acceleration in college football. Although he has now received his doctorate, Rowson continues the research.

“The initial purpose was to look at what fine mechanical forces cause concussions,” Rowson said.

A grant from the National Institute of Health funds Duma’s research, which includes programs at Brown University and Dartmouth College. Other schools, such as the University of Oklahoma, the University of North Carolina and Wake Forest University, have also adopted the research.

All the data can be pooled together to allow for a greater amount and a more diverse selection of information. At Tech, 150,000 impacts have been recorded, while the total number of recorded impacts is nearly 2 million.

Research found that each Tech player receives between 10 and 50 impacts per game, with offensive and defensive lineman receiving the most hits.

Most impacts were recorded between 10 and 50 Gs, or 10 to 50 times the force of gravity at sea level. Twenty Gs was the average impact force, but some hits registered at 100 Gs and were similar to the forces felt in a car crash.

Implanted on Worsham Field beside the 50-yard line are antennas that receive a signal when a player receives a potentially injurious hit. Forces of 80 Gs will notify the team physician to check on a player.  This is a relatively low force level for concussions, but notification allows for safety when taking into account the different tolerances found among different players.

“If you look at the average concussion, the average (force) is right around 100 Gs,” Duma said. “You’ll have some as low as 70 Gs, you’ll have some as high as 130 to 140 Gs.”

Surprisingly, however, some of the large forces were recorded during practices as well. This has provided information as to how drills might be changed and how practices can be modified.

To improve safety, Duma outlined three layers of protection for players. The first deals with coaching. If practices are modified, then player safety can be improved.

Secondly, the rules and design of the game are influential. Duma used the NFL as an example of where rule changes have made the game safer. Despite some protest from fans that the game is not the same as it used to be, Duma said more rules about hitting are beneficial to players.

The third layer is the helmet.

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A version of this article appeared in the Feb 10 issue of the Collegiate Times.