Appeared in The Helios, a Wayne State University College of Engineering newsletter. Summer, 2002
Wayne State University Bioengineering researchers are proposing adjustments to the inside padding of football helmets that they believe will reduce the instances and severity of concussions on the playing field.
Dr. Liying Zhang, a researcher with the WSU Bioengineering Center in collaboration with Professors King H. Yang and Albert I King, has developed a brain model that will give helmet designers a much better idea on how much padding to use at different areas of the head. The human brain has different tolerance levels depending on the direction of the "hit" (tackle), say the researchers, and current helmet design does not consider this directional difference.
Despite new tackling rules and the mandatory use of helmets, there are still more than 100,000 football players in this country who sustain brain injuries every year ranging from mild concussions to death. Dr. Zhang began studying the problem in 1998 after the National Football League Charity approached the center with its concern about head injuries to NFL players, particularly quarterbacks sacked by very large defensive tackles.
To improve the helmet, Dr. Zhang needed to know the force levels at various locations the head can sustain without experiencing injury, as well as the thresholds necessary for serious long-lasting ones. To quantify these differences as well as other factors that cause concussion, Dr. Zhang performed studies using a three-dimensional finite element human head model -- an update of the previously developed Wayne State University Brain Injury Model. The computer model has all the essential anatomical features of a human head, and using it, researchers can calculate internal stress, strain and pressure at all locations, at any given instant during an impact.
Dr. Zhang studied directional sensitivity and calculated how a helmet reduces brain injury risk, then developed and validated a three-dimensional model of a football helmet.
Next, Dr. Zhang analyzed data of head-to-head collisions based on reconstruction of hits suffered by players in the actual game, which was well documented on high-speed video taken at NFL games. Dr. Zhang then applied the speed and direction of impact of all 12 cases involving 24 players to the human head model. The stress and strain levels were used to correlate concussion suffered by these players.
Ideally, for the helmet to be effective, it should absorb most of the force delivered to the head and distribute the remaining energy over a large area at lower force levels. The helmet padding (or lining) is designed to protect the head and to provide comfort at the same time.
To protect against side impacts (the most vulnerable kind), the helmet lining may need to offer more protection around the temporal regions, says Dr. Zhang. The brain model she developed will give helmet designers a much better idea on how much padding to use at all locations in the helmet.
Unfortunately, rotation of the head cannot be eliminated because football players need to be able to rotate their heads during the course of a game.
Dr. Zhang will continue her research to recommend further adjustments in padding thickness, taking into account comfort and practicality -- the material shouldn't weigh too much, and the padding shouldn't be too thick. Additionally, she is developing a new brain injury tolerance surface that will take into account both linear and rotational impacts.
WSU Students Help Develop Army Mobile Parts Hospital
Appeared in Exemplar, the Wayne State University Engineering alumni magazine, 2003
When a military vehicle breaks down on the battlefield, soldiers sometimes wait four days for the Army to track down and ship a new part from its inventory -- if the part still exists.
But soon, soldiers will be able to fabricate replacement parts on the spot through the use of a Mobile Parts Hospital (MPH), a Department of Defense initiative College of Engineering students helped develop through the Greenfield Coalition at Focus: HOPE.
Mobile Parts Hospital mini-manufacturing centers can reproduce or repair broken mechanical components for military vehicles, including trunks, tanks and helicopters -- in a matter of hours. The project has been under development since 1999 through the U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command's National Automotive Center (NAC). Plans are to develop three to four units that would be battle ready by 2007, says Coryne Forest, a project manager at NAC.
The project uses the same thinking behind Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals. “M.A.S.H. units brought surgeons in close to the front lines. This is the same idea,” said Donald Falkenburg, director of the Greenfield Coalition.
The MPH comes in the form of 20-foot containers are packed with machinery, computers and satellite communications technology. The 27,000-pound containers are designed for transport by C-130 military aircraft, so the it can be deployed to remote locations. The containers are not armored, however, so they would likely be placed about 30 miles from the front lines, says Todd Richman, the MPH project manager at NAC.
Set-up takes about an hour. The units expand two feet to allow a technician to maneuver. Inside the module, the operator retrieves part information in the form of computer aided design via satellite from a growing database of more than 90,000 parts. Then, machines either cut and shape solid part stock to fit the digital mold or produce the part layer by layer by fusing metal powder in a process known as directed metal disposition.
If part data is unavailable, or, in the event of a communications failure, the MPH uses a 3-D laser scanner to glean geometric data and "reverse engineer" and build the part. Although the replacement parts are not the same quality as the original equipment manufacturers', they do the job, Forest says.
"The goal is to keep vehicles operating as long as possible in the field and keep the fighting forces fighting as long as they can," says Bruce O'Neill, program manager at Focus: HOPE’s Center for Advanced Technologies.
At the Center for Advanced Technologies, six manufacturing engineering degree candidates from the College of Engineering, the University of Detroit-Mercy and Lawrence Technological Institute had their hands in various elements of the project. The students were involved from a programmatic perspective, O'Neill says. They coordinated the equipment selection process, reviewed design specifications proposed by vendors, and ensured that those would fulfill the requirement.
Andre Reynolds, who received his bachelor's degree in Engineering Technology from Wayne State in 2001, helped develop the prototype 53-foot MPH demonstration trailer. The trailer is equipped with a vertical machining center, selective laser sintering system and communications center, which has video conferencing, satellite and cell phone data transfer capabilities.
"It was a very interesting project," Reynolds says. "It was a major learning curve." Reynolds spent about nine months working on the MPH project -- the longest of any of the candidates. He is now working for Ford Motor Company as a production supervisor.
The demo trailer is currently on the road touring the country for testing, trade shows and conferences.
It is not yet clear who will run the units -- whether it will be a soldier or Department of Defense civilian employee, Richman says. However, operators can learn to use the machinery even if they don't have an engineering background. Qualified personnel can coach operators via satellite from remote communications command centers, O’Neill said.
Mobile Parts Hospitals will also be linked to three Agile Manufacturing Centers located strategically throughout the United States. Those cells can manufacture parts that are too big to be produced in MPH modules or those not stored in the inventory database. Obsolete parts the government cannot get elsewhere can also be produced. The parts would then be transported to the point of need.
When a military vehicle breaks down on the battlefield, soldiers sometimes wait four days for the Army to track down and ship a new part from its inventory -- if the part still exists.
But soon, soldiers will be able to fabricate replacement parts on the spot through the use of a Mobile Parts Hospital (MPH), a Department of Defense initiative College of Engineering students helped develop through the Greenfield Coalition at Focus: HOPE.
Mobile Parts Hospital mini-manufacturing centers can reproduce or repair broken mechanical components for military vehicles, including trunks, tanks and helicopters -- in a matter of hours. The project has been under development since 1999 through the U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command's National Automotive Center (NAC). Plans are to develop three to four units that would be battle ready by 2007, says Coryne Forest, a project manager at NAC.
The project uses the same thinking behind Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals. “M.A.S.H. units brought surgeons in close to the front lines. This is the same idea,” said Donald Falkenburg, director of the Greenfield Coalition.
The MPH comes in the form of 20-foot containers are packed with machinery, computers and satellite communications technology. The 27,000-pound containers are designed for transport by C-130 military aircraft, so the it can be deployed to remote locations. The containers are not armored, however, so they would likely be placed about 30 miles from the front lines, says Todd Richman, the MPH project manager at NAC.
Set-up takes about an hour. The units expand two feet to allow a technician to maneuver. Inside the module, the operator retrieves part information in the form of computer aided design via satellite from a growing database of more than 90,000 parts. Then, machines either cut and shape solid part stock to fit the digital mold or produce the part layer by layer by fusing metal powder in a process known as directed metal disposition.
If part data is unavailable, or, in the event of a communications failure, the MPH uses a 3-D laser scanner to glean geometric data and "reverse engineer" and build the part. Although the replacement parts are not the same quality as the original equipment manufacturers', they do the job, Forest says.
"The goal is to keep vehicles operating as long as possible in the field and keep the fighting forces fighting as long as they can," says Bruce O'Neill, program manager at Focus: HOPE’s Center for Advanced Technologies.
At the Center for Advanced Technologies, six manufacturing engineering degree candidates from the College of Engineering, the University of Detroit-Mercy and Lawrence Technological Institute had their hands in various elements of the project. The students were involved from a programmatic perspective, O'Neill says. They coordinated the equipment selection process, reviewed design specifications proposed by vendors, and ensured that those would fulfill the requirement.
Andre Reynolds, who received his bachelor's degree in Engineering Technology from Wayne State in 2001, helped develop the prototype 53-foot MPH demonstration trailer. The trailer is equipped with a vertical machining center, selective laser sintering system and communications center, which has video conferencing, satellite and cell phone data transfer capabilities.
"It was a very interesting project," Reynolds says. "It was a major learning curve." Reynolds spent about nine months working on the MPH project -- the longest of any of the candidates. He is now working for Ford Motor Company as a production supervisor.
The demo trailer is currently on the road touring the country for testing, trade shows and conferences.
It is not yet clear who will run the units -- whether it will be a soldier or Department of Defense civilian employee, Richman says. However, operators can learn to use the machinery even if they don't have an engineering background. Qualified personnel can coach operators via satellite from remote communications command centers, O’Neill said.
Mobile Parts Hospitals will also be linked to three Agile Manufacturing Centers located strategically throughout the United States. Those cells can manufacture parts that are too big to be produced in MPH modules or those not stored in the inventory database. Obsolete parts the government cannot get elsewhere can also be produced. The parts would then be transported to the point of need.
Bioengineering turns to human cell for answers
Appeared in Exemplar, the Wayne State University Engineering alumni magazine, 2002
After 60 years of crash tests and applying blunt force, researchers here are turning to the human cell for answers during the next phase in bioengineering research.
Having nearly completed mapping the human body's tolerance to severe impacts, the researchers are beginning to examine injuries at the cellular level to learn more about how cells are damaged.
"I'm envisioning the day when you can walk away from most car crashes," says Albert King, distinguished professor of Bioengineering, and director of the WSU Bioengineering Center, where research has contributed to the design of safety advancements in seat belts, air bags, interior padding and racing seats.
Severe auto accident victims now end up in the ER instead of the morgue. But in many cases, victims still suffer from debilitating closed head and neck injuries, as well as injuries to the lower limbs. Safety designs have eliminated many acute, but not functional injuries -- damaged limbs, and minor brain damage -- injuries that people can live with, but that affect their quality of life, Dr. King explains.
To gain understanding of functional injuries, Dr. King and WSU researchers plan to study the function of a cell as well as how it is affected and injured upon impact. Then, 10 to 20 years from now, doctors may be able to prevent and better treat injuries to reduce long-lasting effects, he says.
"We want to know how the cell's function is compromised by injury," says Dr. King. "We want to know how a cell is injured, why it dies, and how to make it survive."
The cell membrane controls a lot of the cell's function, including what enters and leaves the cell. Research of that scale requires expertise in the areas of molecular biology, biomechanics, physics, physiology, engineering and medicine. Wayne State investigators from across these disciplines are starting to work together at the Bioengineering Center to study impact bioengineering, and to suggest improvements in vehicle and airplane design, sports equipment and other applications.
The researchers want to analyze the forces that cause long-lasting or permanent damage to the brain. Along those same lines, researchers are also trying to determine where lingering pain comes from following a head and neck injury in a crash. These are the big questions that remain after years of impact injury research. The answers may lead to the reduction of further pain and suffering, not to mention billions of dollars in rehabilitation costs.
With severe impact injuries, secondary injuries, including brain damage, start to set in within hours or a few days of the accident, says C.P. Lee, distinguished professor of biochemistry at the WSU School of Medicine. The injury to the cells may cause changes to their biomedical processes and affect their basic metabolic functions, adds Dr. Lee, who collaborates with Bioengineering Center researchers. Currently, she is researching what goes wrong and how to stop the injury in its tracks before it causes permanent damage.
Once researchers pin down the problem, treating it could be as easy as administering antioxidants and calcium blockers through IVs in the emergency room, she says. Getting antioxidants and calcium blockers into the cells before oxidative stress causes too much damage may reduce the long-term effects of injuries.
"(The research) is very, very promising," Dr. Lee says. She explains that cell damage can be caused by oxidative stress brought on by an overload of calcium ions triggered by a severe impact. The overload can inhibit oxygen transfer within a cell. If the mitochondria, which produce energy in the cell, cannot transfer oxygen effectively, they cannot produce enough energy to maintain the brain or other organs.
Across all disciplines, researchers are working toward the same goal -- finding out how much stress a cell can take, whether the impact causes chemical, mechanical or physiological changes, Dr. King says. The WSU School of Medicine is currently studying programmed cell death, or apoptosis, to figure out how much a cell can take before it is injured so bad that it "commits suicide," Dr. King says. "All we want to know is what it is that causes a cell to go into apoptosis or necrosis, and how the mechanical force causes that to happen."
One way to study impact is to apply a known force or stress level to an individual cell, then analyze the impact on that cell and monitor its function after it has been stretched, Dr. King says. The technology to measure such small forces already exists. One type of sensor currently used in laboratories can measure forces in the order of piconewtons, a unit one-trillionth the size of a newton, the basic unit of force. That sensor measures the force a cell applies to a platform when it moves across the surface. That same technology can be used to measure the impact on one cell.
Another idea is to partner with the WSU Smart Sensors and Integrated Microsystems Lab to develop miniature smart sensors. Much later on, Dr. King hopes this research will lead to the construction of a computer model of cellular injures.
Dr. King acknowledges that the full benefits of these investigations may not be realized for more than a decade. For now, the idea is more of a vision than reality. "It's more like trying to find an answer to a question that hasn't been asked yet," Dr. King says. "Our center is externally funded. We have to stay ahead of the game."
Before such research can begin, the Bioengineering Research Center must first invest in sophisticated equipment such as the type that molecular biologists use to study DNA, and bring together people with more than just a molecular biology background. "We have to get our own people upgraded, hire more people in the field, and make use of whatever knowledge is available at the medical school," says Dr. King.
The catalyst for this vision was created recently with the approval of a $1 million grant from the Whitaker Foundation that should pave the way for a permanent Biomedical Engineering Department. With an additional $1 million grant from Wayne State, and about $2.5 million more from industry, the new department can be launched, and accelerate research in the biomedical areas that can make real differences in people's lives.
After 60 years of crash tests and applying blunt force, researchers here are turning to the human cell for answers during the next phase in bioengineering research.
Having nearly completed mapping the human body's tolerance to severe impacts, the researchers are beginning to examine injuries at the cellular level to learn more about how cells are damaged.
"I'm envisioning the day when you can walk away from most car crashes," says Albert King, distinguished professor of Bioengineering, and director of the WSU Bioengineering Center, where research has contributed to the design of safety advancements in seat belts, air bags, interior padding and racing seats.
Severe auto accident victims now end up in the ER instead of the morgue. But in many cases, victims still suffer from debilitating closed head and neck injuries, as well as injuries to the lower limbs. Safety designs have eliminated many acute, but not functional injuries -- damaged limbs, and minor brain damage -- injuries that people can live with, but that affect their quality of life, Dr. King explains.
To gain understanding of functional injuries, Dr. King and WSU researchers plan to study the function of a cell as well as how it is affected and injured upon impact. Then, 10 to 20 years from now, doctors may be able to prevent and better treat injuries to reduce long-lasting effects, he says.
"We want to know how the cell's function is compromised by injury," says Dr. King. "We want to know how a cell is injured, why it dies, and how to make it survive."
The cell membrane controls a lot of the cell's function, including what enters and leaves the cell. Research of that scale requires expertise in the areas of molecular biology, biomechanics, physics, physiology, engineering and medicine. Wayne State investigators from across these disciplines are starting to work together at the Bioengineering Center to study impact bioengineering, and to suggest improvements in vehicle and airplane design, sports equipment and other applications.
The researchers want to analyze the forces that cause long-lasting or permanent damage to the brain. Along those same lines, researchers are also trying to determine where lingering pain comes from following a head and neck injury in a crash. These are the big questions that remain after years of impact injury research. The answers may lead to the reduction of further pain and suffering, not to mention billions of dollars in rehabilitation costs.
With severe impact injuries, secondary injuries, including brain damage, start to set in within hours or a few days of the accident, says C.P. Lee, distinguished professor of biochemistry at the WSU School of Medicine. The injury to the cells may cause changes to their biomedical processes and affect their basic metabolic functions, adds Dr. Lee, who collaborates with Bioengineering Center researchers. Currently, she is researching what goes wrong and how to stop the injury in its tracks before it causes permanent damage.
Once researchers pin down the problem, treating it could be as easy as administering antioxidants and calcium blockers through IVs in the emergency room, she says. Getting antioxidants and calcium blockers into the cells before oxidative stress causes too much damage may reduce the long-term effects of injuries.
"(The research) is very, very promising," Dr. Lee says. She explains that cell damage can be caused by oxidative stress brought on by an overload of calcium ions triggered by a severe impact. The overload can inhibit oxygen transfer within a cell. If the mitochondria, which produce energy in the cell, cannot transfer oxygen effectively, they cannot produce enough energy to maintain the brain or other organs.
Across all disciplines, researchers are working toward the same goal -- finding out how much stress a cell can take, whether the impact causes chemical, mechanical or physiological changes, Dr. King says. The WSU School of Medicine is currently studying programmed cell death, or apoptosis, to figure out how much a cell can take before it is injured so bad that it "commits suicide," Dr. King says. "All we want to know is what it is that causes a cell to go into apoptosis or necrosis, and how the mechanical force causes that to happen."
One way to study impact is to apply a known force or stress level to an individual cell, then analyze the impact on that cell and monitor its function after it has been stretched, Dr. King says. The technology to measure such small forces already exists. One type of sensor currently used in laboratories can measure forces in the order of piconewtons, a unit one-trillionth the size of a newton, the basic unit of force. That sensor measures the force a cell applies to a platform when it moves across the surface. That same technology can be used to measure the impact on one cell.
Another idea is to partner with the WSU Smart Sensors and Integrated Microsystems Lab to develop miniature smart sensors. Much later on, Dr. King hopes this research will lead to the construction of a computer model of cellular injures.
Dr. King acknowledges that the full benefits of these investigations may not be realized for more than a decade. For now, the idea is more of a vision than reality. "It's more like trying to find an answer to a question that hasn't been asked yet," Dr. King says. "Our center is externally funded. We have to stay ahead of the game."
Before such research can begin, the Bioengineering Research Center must first invest in sophisticated equipment such as the type that molecular biologists use to study DNA, and bring together people with more than just a molecular biology background. "We have to get our own people upgraded, hire more people in the field, and make use of whatever knowledge is available at the medical school," says Dr. King.
The catalyst for this vision was created recently with the approval of a $1 million grant from the Whitaker Foundation that should pave the way for a permanent Biomedical Engineering Department. With an additional $1 million grant from Wayne State, and about $2.5 million more from industry, the new department can be launched, and accelerate research in the biomedical areas that can make real differences in people's lives.
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