The impact is, quite literally, breathtaking.
When the ram hits the football helmet in Yvan Petit and Eric Wagnac’s laboratory at the École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS), the shock wave generated passes through the protective screen and hits us in the body.
Yet this is only a medium-intensity collision. When Roxane Le Vot, research assistant to professors Petit and Wagnac, programs a full-power collision simulating the impact between the helmets of two professional football players colliding at full speed, one wonders how a human brain could ever escape relatively unscathed.
Yet this is the challenge that the two researchers have been tackling for several years: to develop, on behalf of the powerful American NFL, a new generation of helmets that will protect players’ heads as much as possible, while meeting the demands of the world’s best athletes who play this sport.
“It may seem simple, a helmet, but when you look at it from an engineering perspective, it’s a very complex problem,” said Wagnac, whose laboratory was visited by The Canadian Press during the inauguration of ÉTS’s new health technology research and innovation institute, itechsanté.
Petit and Wagnac had been interested in helmets for a long time when, in 2019, the NFL launched what it called its “helmet challenge.” ― an initiative that, in the league’s words, aimed to “encourage experts, innovators, and helmet manufacturers to develop a new helmet for NFL players that (…) surpasses all helmet models currently used by NFL players.”
This accelerated the creation of their laboratory within the walls of ÉTS, as they had about a year left before the NFL’s deadline to present the first prototypes.
“The first test bench we created (…) replicates the laboratory used by the NFL to test helmets in a fairly similar way,” explained Wagnac. The NFL conducts an annual classification of helmets submitted to them by manufacturers, and this classification determines the best and worst helmets, even banning a number of them, so we don’t want to end up on the red list.”
“But sometimes,” he added, “you need fresh eyes and a new approach.”
Their first prototype resembles a sponge: a yellow plastic lining, approximately two centimeters thick, riddled with tiny cells, which is placed under the hard helmet to absorb and distribute impact.
The most recent version, currently being used in the field by some players, reflects the rapid evolution of the product over the years: a flexible black plastic structure, printed in three dimensions, composed of dozens of interconnected geometric structures, somewhat reminiscent of the helmets used to perform electroencephalograms.
“The innovation really lies in basing the entire design on 3D printing,” said Petit. “The entire liner is 3D printed. We sought to optimize the internal structure based on our 3D printing capabilities.”
In total, the prototypes are subjected to 18 impacts of varying intensity and from different directions, in order to replicate what a player will encounter on the field.
“This allows us to calculate an index called the HPS, or Helmet Performance Security Score,” explained Wagnac. “It’s really the metric that compares all the different helmets. The goal is to have the lowest possible metric, the lowest possible HPS. At the time, the best helmets scored around 0.85. Then the NFL wanted 0.7, so that was a significant reduction.”
The goal remains unattainable for now, he added, since the best scores achieved so far are just below 0.8. “Sometimes,” explained Wagnac, “you optimize at high speed, but you end up penalizing at low speed, so it’s very complex.”
Their prototype ultimately ranked among the top three presented to the NFL. The Montreal-based company Kollide is responsible for manufacturing the helmets, which are marketed in the United States by Light Helmets.
Another model ranks first in the Virginia Tech university rankings, which focuses solely on helmets for amateur players.
Before the NFL competition began, Petit said, the trend was toward heavier and stiffer helmets.
“We really reduced the weight, and that set us apart,” he explained. “But our team changed the paradigm by showing that it was possible to reduce weight and increase performance. That was really a distinctive feature we had in the competition.”
The knowledge generated is obviously transferable to everything related to head protection, from bicycle helmets to construction helmets. Petit points out that he and his colleagues were interested in hockey helmets before moving on to football.
The work is never done, as the NFL re-evaluates helmets once a year. The next deadline is fast approaching at the end of November, so the two researchers are helping Kollide optimize the next model to be presented to the league, with a view to publishing the new rankings in early 2026.
The NFL is going even further by developing position-specific protocols, since the protection needs of a quarterback are not the same as those of a center.
There is also a new awareness of the dangers posed not only by thunderous blows to the head, but also by the tens of thousands of small impacts that a player can take throughout his career, which are by no means harmless.
“It’s important to protect against traumatic concussions, yes, that’s clear, everyone agrees on that, but increasingly, there is an awareness that we will have to go beyond that,” concluded Petit. “But how we can achieve that, not many people have the answer yet.”
–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews
