The crack of helmet-to-helmet collisions, the blur of uniforms and the roar of the crowd as a player scores the winning touchdown are things football players live for – the action, the intensity and the challenge of the game.
But with intensity and challenge come consequences. In the heat of the game, some players attempt to increase their abilities by wearing their protective gear incorrectly. In the end, the attempts commonly end in injury – most of the time to the knee.
College of Textile students David Buchanan, Philip Hankins, Bradley Belfiore, Erin Johnston, Drew Lortt, Paul Limone and Marshall Laney aim to solve this problem with their senior project by using innovative technology to prevent knee injuries to football players everywhere.
With the help of their instructor, Moon Suh, and senior project advisor Katherine Carroll, the group worked to develop a kneepad prototype that promotes safety while still allowing a wide range of motion.
Carroll came to the group with the idea after her son, a football player, noticed other players getting hurt on the field due to wearing knee pads incorrectly. Players have been known to slide their kneepads up because the pads slow them down.
“Players have the mentality that they would rather run faster than to wear knee pads,” Hankins said.
According to Buchanan, incorrectly wearing kneepads often results in painful injuries to the knee.
“When you get hit in the knee, let’s say with a helmet, the knee actually gives, injuring not just one side of the knee, but the opposite as well,” Buchanan said.
According to the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, the knee is the largest joint in the body and most susceptible to injury in contact sports. The medial collateral ligament responsible for the knee’s overall stability is especially vulnerable.
Hankins said he believes if there was a way to combine both protection and mobility, players would be more willing to wear the pads.
“The most important thing was finding out where the impact is taking place,” Hankins said. “We had to find a design that allows the players to move.”
The kneepads will be comfortably built into the pant legs, ridding players’ temptation to slide them up or not wear them all together.
The back of the knee is left uniquely exposed, offering more movement, unlike other football pants. To top it off, the pad is lightweight, offering protection without weighing the player down.
The kneepads will be made up of d3o, a lightweight smart material that is able to absorb shock while maintaining durability, allowing players the optimal mobility and protection they are looking for.
“What makes it smart is that under rate of acceleration, the material hardens up,” Buchanan said. “But when it’s slowly pulled, it becomes pliable again – like silly putty.”
The molecules that make up d3o are flexible when moved slowly, but when under impact, the material tenses up as the “smart” molecules lock together.
The group hopes the knee will be protected under impact from d3o, especially when their mold for the pad will protect all sides of the knee, not just the front like typical foam protectors.
“Most impacts happen from the side,” Buchanan said. “So our design would help eliminate those injuries.”
With the overall protection of d3o technology, the students hope to substantially decrease the number of knee injuries with help of their design.
“We suspect that this will eliminate injuries to the knee by 50 percent,” Buchanan said.
With the planning stage complete, the group has now moved on to production. In the next few weeks they will create the first prototype using the University’s laboratories on Centennial Campus.
“You can do everything [in the laboratories],” Carroll said. “We have the best educational facility in the country for doing this, hands down.”
Once the prototype is created, the group will put the pants to the test on the field with the help of willing football players.
According to Buchanan and Hankins, they will have players go through three different drills: One without kneepads, one with the old foam version and one with the revamped version.
“Then we’ll compare our results,” Hankins said. “And hopefully we’ll like what we see.”
The students have big aspirations of what’s to come from their prototype.
“Our first market would be an NFL trader,” Hankins said. “But we would like to sell to NCAA athletic apparel too.”
“The product could take off,” Buchanan said. “You never know. Senior projects have worked out before.
About the d3o
Invented by British Engineers, d3o is an orange, rubbery smart material made of “intelligent molecules.” It is hard on impact, yet malleable to touch like silly-putty.
Energy is distributed throughout the synthetic d3o polymer and distributed throughout the matrix, significantly reducing the effect of impact.
Source: d3o.com
