Most sports Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) consist of varying levels of foam – more foam equals more protection. This has led to bulky, cumbersome PPE which restricts user movement. However, before existing PPE can be modified, their performance must be assessed and a baseline for necessary protection must be explicitly determined. This is a major limitation since current techniques for assessing PPE performance and impact intensity measurements from sport have used surrogate anvils and impactors which were not validated for the sports-related impact they tried to replicate. Through a series of independent studies, a better understanding of human impact response in sporting impacts was sought. This included investigating methods for improving the measurement of impact intensities in sports and the assessment of PPE performance. Human impact response revealed that tensed muscle led to a significant increase in impact force but was associated with less perceived discomfort. At low impact intensities common to sport, the increased local stiffness helped to dissipate impact energy and reduce soft tissue compression. As previous anvils omitted this soft tissue response, modifications were made to a martial arts dummy, BOBXL, to increase its biofidelity. This anvil was validated using in vivo kicks and an impact force – impact velocity relationship. Using this validated anvil, existing methods of assessing PPE performance were evaluated. Current methods were found to create artificially comparable levels of force but did so by using an incorrect effective mass and impact velocity. In all tests, PPE performance was found to depend on weight providing evidence of the ‘more protection, more foam' concept. As it is impractical to use in vivo kicks to assess PPE performance, kick kinematics were investigated to assess its variability in terms of the impact force – impact velocity relationship and its accuracy. This aided in the development of a mechanical kicking robot which could more properly assess PPE performance. This research was applied to the design of form-fitting, impact-mitigating sports PPE with the capability for integrated technology. Proposed amendments to the current methods of assessing PPE will help to develop better testing and better performing PPE in the future.

The present research aims to develop a novel technique for creation of composite riot helmet shells with reinforcing fibre continuity for better protection against low velocity impacts. In this research an innovative, simple and effective method of making a single-piece continuously textile reinforced helmet shell by vacuum bagging has been established and discussed. This technique also includes the development of solid collapsible moulding apparatus from non-woven fibres. Angle-interlock fabric due to its good mouldability, low shear rigidity and ease of production is used in this research. Several wrinkle-free single- piece composite helmet shells have been manufactured. Low-velocity impact test on the continuously reinforced helmet shells has been carried out. For this purpose an in-house helmet shell testing facility has been developed. Test rig has been designed in such a way that the impact test can be carried out at different locations at the riot helmet shell. Low-velocity impact test has been successfully conducted on the developed test rig. The practical experimentation and analysis revealed that the helmet shell performance against impact is dependent on the impact location. The helmet shell top surface has better impact protection as compared to helmet shell side and back location. Moreover, the helmet shell side is the most at risk location for the wearer. Finite Element models were created and simulated in Abaqus software to investigate the impact performance of single-piece helmet shells at different impact locations. Models parts have been designed in Rhinoceros software. Simulated results are validated by the experimental result which shows that the helmet top position is the safest position against an impact when it is compared to helmet back and helmet side positions.