Toward a new approach for passive safety assessment of gymnastic equipment

Purpose: Aim of the paper is to propose a new approach for the assessment of passive safety of gymnastic equipment that allows technicians to optimize the choice of protection devices. Design/methodology/approach: According to different standard procedures, EN 913 and EN 1177 with an additional control on the acceleration parameter, experimental tests on polymer foam materials were performed using cylindrical and hemispherical missiles connected to a flexible impact testing apparatus realized at Chemnitz University of Technology. Findings: Impact tests carried out using cylindrical and hemispherical missiles have shown, for the same impact energy, different acceleration peak values, always greater for hemispherical missile than cylindrical one. So considering EN 913 procedure, the severity of head impacts, in term of acceleration peak can be underestimated when a cylindrical missile is used. For this reason to correctly assess the head injuries is necessary to take into account in addition to the acceleration peak value, also HIC parameter. Research limitations/implications: The research described in the paper was carried out taking into account only the human head impacts (the most severe injuries) and not other parts of the human body. Practical implications: The new approach proposed in the paper can be useful for the choice of the protective devices to improve the passive safety of gymnastic equipment. It represents a starting point to define new standards. Originality/value: On the base of experimental tests, the authors show that the safety threshold of peak acceleration defined in the EN913 standard is poor. For this reason it is necessary to modify the current standards, in order to guarantee an adequate passive safety and to allow the technicians to optimize the choice of protection devices on the base of impact absorption properties, that are evaluated using all together the parameters: acceleration peak, drop height and Head Injury Criterion (HIC).