REDIPhE Project Partners

Rethinking the design of protective helmets to avoid traumatic brain injuries

DII UNIPD, leading institution of the proposal.

Prof. Ugo Galvanetto is full professor of Aerospace structures, he has been working on motorcycle passive safety and protective equipment for more than ten years, he is the principal investigator, the originator and main proposer of the research activity.

Prof. Mirco Zaccariotto is associate professor of Aerospace structures, he is an expert of finite element and multi-body simulations.

They interacted with the medical team, for the generation of the computational models from the high definition images provided by them, and with the CMBM for the definition of the constitutive laws of brain materials. They also were the main supervisors of the Multi-body and FEM simulations of the project and of the "assegnisti di ricerca" working for 48 months in the Department of Industrial Engineering.

DNS UNIPD

Prof. Domenico d’Avella has been publishing on TBI since 1990 and more recently he has been active in the field of advanced neuroimaging.

Together with Prof. Luca Denaro and Dr. Valentina Baro, he supervised the selection of head images to be converted into computational models and the generation of the models themselves. Then they coordinated the procedure, mainly based on interviewing patients, to select the examples of accident to be used in the validation procedure of the mathematical models.

They interacted with the engineering team to express an evaluation of the helmet innovations. They were the main supervisors of the "assegnista di ricerca" working for 24 months in the Department of Neurosciences.

CMBM UNIPD

Prof. Arturo Natali and prof. Piero Pavan have been working on the mechanics of biological materials and structures for many years.

Prof. Natali founded and was for several years the head of the Centre and provided expert guidance about the constitutive description of the material.

Prof. Pavan provided more constant supervision of the young researchers involved in the work with particular attention to the constitutive properties of biological materials. They were the main supervisors of the "assegnisti di ricerca" working for 12 months in the Centre for Mechanics of Biological Materials.

Dainese SpA

Industrial world leader in the production of items of personal protective equipment for dynamic activities, in particular of helmets for motorcyclists, cyclists and skiers.

Ing. Alessandro Cernicchi, provided industrial advice to the research teams and information about protective helmets.

Ing. Cernicchi has more than ten years of experience in the design of helmets on which he has published a few scientific papers, see for example [10, 13]. No human resources will be managed by Dainese within the project.