Virginia Research Day 2022

Faculty Research Biomedical

01 May The Force Be With You: Designing Light Sabers And Toy Swords To Reduce Pediatric Injury Risk

Stefan Duma; Steven Rowson; Melissa Hulse; Stephanie Beeman Corresponding author: sduma@vt.edu

Virginia Tech

Virginia Tech IRB FWA00000572 approved the research protocol

hitting a head form as hard as possible. The head and neck assembly of a 6-Year-Old Hybrid III Child anthropometric test device (ATD) was used to evaluate potential head acceleration response due to impact from various toy swords. The head was modified so that it could house a 9-accelerometer array that was used to calculate linear and rotational accelerations. Volunteer kinematics were recorded using a Vicon 3-D motion capture system with 16 cameras and targets on the volunteer and dummy head. Age proved to have a significant effect on the resultant accelerations of the head form for each sword type. Gender only proved to have a significant impact on the resulting accelerations from impacts with a few sword types. Marked differences in sword swing kinematics were observed between genders, age groups, and sword types. All impact trials, regardless of age, gender, or sword, were associated with injury metric values that were negligible when compared to established injury thresholds.

Understanding the physical capacity of children of different ages and genders is important for the evaluation of injury risk and the design of new toys. Studies characterizing the kinematics of sword-like toys and those that describe the physical response to being struck by a sword-like toy in terms of head kinematics and injury metrics are lacking. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the ability of children to swing sword-like toys and the human kinematic response that could be anticipated as a result of being impacted during a forceful swinging behavior. A total of 66 human volunteers (subjects) were involved in this research, ranging from 8 years to 14 years old, half male and half female. Each subject participated in four trials using various toy swords or toy sword-like devices for a total of 264 tests. The first trial had each subject swing a Hasbro Lightsaber as hard and as fast as he/she could in the air back and forth for approximately 10 seconds. The remaining three trials involved using the Lightsaber and two different swords or sword like devices and

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