Citation

Berger RE, Calvano NJ. J. Saf. Res. 1979; 11(1): 14-19.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1979, U.S. National Safety Council, Publisher Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The likelihood of an injury associated with a consumer product is generally assessed by test methods that are abstractions of actual conditions and that may therefore be more or less unrealistic. To demonstrate the effects of differing amounts of realism, the real-life simulation of impacts with headgear protection was compared with a non-realistic test method. The real-life simulation used a humanoid headform, the test method are rigid metal headform. Impact velocity was the same for both configurations; impact surface varied in hardness to represent different playing surfaces. Using established tolerance criteria, procedures were developed for relating pass/fail thresholds of the real-life simulation to those of the test method. In addition, the efficiency of the test method was assessed in terms of acceptable levels of discrimination of unsafe products, as well as the false alarm rate (rejection of safe products). The nonrealistic test method was found to correlate sufficiently well with real-life simulation to be used in testing protective headgear.