February 22, 2024 • 10 mins
COULD WE MAKE FOOTBALL SAFER? And not just football, but any sport that uses a helmet? That is the hope of CU Doctoral Candidate Lawrence Smith, who has been working to do just that. He and his colleagues have invented a new kind of foam that absorbs a LOT more impact than traditional foam and I'm talking to Lawrence about it today at 1. Read more about it and see photos here.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Lawrence Smith is a CU doctoral candidateand he has been working with a team
to make and I'm going to usehelmets because that's really kind of what got
me going on this safer by creatingand Lawrence, please correct me if I'm
wrong better padding systems for helmets orother things that are designed to protect someone.
(00:21):
First of all, Lawrence, welcometo the show. Thanks, and
it's great to be on. Happyto be here. So you're exactly what
we're trying to do here is totake an object that's fragile and is moving
at a high speed and that comesto a stop really abruptly, And the
whole goal of this is to controlthe way that we decelerate to a full
(00:42):
stop. Materials that you see onthe market now are all phones. These
are kind of dumb materials. They'recheap, they're inexpensive, they're volume filling,
but they offer really limited control overthat deceleration. So my research that
I worked on in the final stagesof my PhD, actually i defended a
couple months ago, was all aboutdesigning new geometries, new energy absorbing geometries
(01:07):
that allow us to exert very finecontrol over these decelerations. I got to
tell you, Lawrence. When Ifirst saw the pictures of this, I
thought to myself, I wonder ifLawrence found himself in high school physics trying
to build a contraption so he coulddrop an egg off of a building,
and that started him down this pathbecause many of us in this listening audience
had to do that assignment. Iwas not successful, by the way mine
(01:32):
smashed into a million pieces. Butit's kind of the same thing, right,
I mean, it's kind of thesame fundamental underlying problem, and you've
just taken it to the next level. That's exactly right. What a great
example. In fact, I didin eighth grade do an egg drop a
great America in Santa se California.I went to high school and did pretty
(01:53):
well. Honestly, not the exactsame technique as we're publishing here in this
paper, but it's a perfect sample. How do you protect something fragile when
it decelerates really quickly? And ouranswer is to use three D printing.
We can three D print geometries thatare impossible for foams to compete with.
It's kind of a smart way tolay out geometries such that we can lower
(02:15):
the peak impact forces by up totwenty five percent the closest thing. And
I've got a link to the DailyCamera story that actually has a picture of
this foam in the story. Itkind of looks like a for lack of
a better way to put it,like a wine rack if you would with
X's It's kind of like a honeycombmeets a wine rack. And what is
(02:38):
the advantage of that kind of crosshatched a system over what foam has to
offer? Great question? So itdoes look exactly like a honeycomb panel with
some folds on the side, someorigami like folds, And the answer is
(03:00):
that, you know, let's relateit to a car. The crumple zone
in a car is to design isdesigned to absorb energy when impacted from a
frontal collision really really well. Uh, that's because we know the direction impacts
are going to come from. They'renot going to come from a piano drop
it on top of the car,So why not exert control in order to
(03:21):
have a really high performing design whenyou know the impact direction. So these
materials they look like honeycombs, sothat they perform really well when compressed in
one specific direction. And the pointis, hey, we just point that
direction where we know the impacts arecoming from. In the instance of a
helmet, we would we would tilethis pattern like a layer wrapped around the
(03:43):
head, so that any radial impactfrom any direction is going to be facing
this. This uh, this honeycombpattern. What is this? Actually?
Foam can't do that. Homes justare the same in every direction. So
it's it's really an expression of howwell we can control these geometries. What
is this actually made out of?You guys are three D printing it,
But what is the actual material thatis being that is being used to three
(04:05):
D printed? Sure, it's calleda thermoplastic polyurisane, and it's like a
rubber I think, like a rubberband. A little bit stiffer than that,
but similar, similar type of material. And the key point here is,
you know, the way we domost design is for looking for the
right material. Right, that rubberis too soft, that foam is too
(04:28):
stiff, Let's go dial in andmake a new one. This is not
what we're doing in our research.We're trying to build new geometries. Right.
We're exerting really fine geometric control overdesigns because we have three D printing
and so that just gives us awhole wealth of uh new you know,
material property portfolios you would never findout in nature. So these these things
(04:54):
we're designing, we call them metamaterials metamans beyond, because we're designing things
that exhibit properties beyond what you canfind in nature. So, how many
different how many different geometric geometric shapesdid you kind of burn through before you
settled on this particular geometric shape.Oh, that's a great question. Let
me tell you a lot. Thisis about two years of research. So
(05:17):
we printed hundreds and hundreds of samplesthat we were testing the experiments where we
drop pieces of steel on them andtake high speed video and watch that they
bounce and smash off the ground.And then also in simulation where we use
computers to predict the way that thesethings deformed. But I'm telling you hundreds
hundreds of different samples in order toarrive at the photos that you see in
(05:40):
that article. So one of theissues, and I'm going to use football
as an example because I think mostpeople understand this. When two football players
collide helmet to helmet, the issuewith the brain is actually not necessarily the
external impact, but the brain itselfslams into the inside of the skull.
So does this lessen that impact?And if so, how that is a
(06:04):
fantastic question. Yeah, so thisskull is very robust. The skull is
not going to crack on impact.It's that kind of secondary impact of the
brain decelerating against the inside of theskull. I've heard this described as the
iron Man problem. You got ironMan falling a half mile of the sky.
He hits the ground hard enough toshatter the street. The suit's fine,
(06:28):
but inside he'd be mush. Youknow your body, your brain is
way softer than the skull that surroundsit. And so the answer is we
are controlling the deceleration of the skullso that the skull sees fewer forces and
it's going to transmit those lower forcesto the brain. So an answer going
to work. Yes, this isabsolutely going to pass these benefits in force
(06:50):
reduction onto the brain. So haveyou guys had the opportunity to put this
to the test in a helmet?I mean, is that something we're going
to see going forward? And howthick does this padding have to be to
reach a level of effectiveness that itwould make a difference great question, So
on the taking the second piece first. At any thickness, these materials outperform
(07:15):
isotropic phones, So at any sicknessin any weight. That was one of
the key findings of our research.The thicker the materials of better. So
it's all about just dialing in thehigh level design requirements like the the tolerable
g forces that you can transit toa brain, and then the sickness of
(07:38):
the helmet and you will you willbasically back out like, oh, here's
how a heard of it hit Icould take With this thickness, we're you
know, I think that normal helmethas about an inch thick of padding,
so we'd probably just design around that. And that being said, we haven't
actually constructed a full prototype helmet yet. Our lab, the mac lab at
(07:59):
the university called on a Boulder,we kind of operate at the frontiers of
our knowledge, so we're not actuallydirectly commercializing this technology, although we have
lockdown a provisional patent for it already. I would love to see the Denver
Broncos reach out and say, hey, we want to work with you to
get that prototypical helmet, because I'mtalking about helmets now, but this stuff
(08:22):
has applications that go well beyond Imean, this could be used for packing
pretty much anything. And what isthis is this material? Is it recyclable,
is it biodegradable? What happens toit when we're done? When it's
useful? Lifespan is over right,So this particular material is actually really hard
to break down because we want tosustain repeated impact, right, But we
(08:45):
can three D print these geometries fromany material. Some of them are like
polylactic acid is fully bioinegradable, andso we do a lot of printing with
that as well. Here Denver Bronco'spoint, I am all in for this.
I think any any lines we candraw between research and real life applications
that get people excited, you know, where they see science really at work
(09:07):
in things they care about, likefootball, it's just a win win,
right. It's a huge benefit forlabs like ours that CU Boulder and for
you know, the end users,the applications that are actually going to benefit
in this research. I kind ofwant to just take this research off the
shelf and put it out in theworld, and so no better way to
do that than through you know,programs like this. We're republicizing and potentially
(09:31):
a partnership between the Broncos. Iall for that. Well, I don't
know if you know, but seeyou Boulder as a coach who also gets
a lot of headlines and media attention. So maybe reach out to coach Prime
and say, look, we wantto work with your football team and get
this going and let him amplify thenerdy science part. Because I think you're
right. The more people make thoseconnections between what you guys do in the
(09:54):
lab and how it directly impacts ourlives and that will inspire I hope the
next generation of scientists like you togo into this industry. And Lawrence,
I just think this is the coolestthing. I wish you continued success.
Now have you Have you been awardedyour doctorate? Are you doctor Smith yet?
Are you waiting? What is thatprocess? Now? I am doctor
(10:16):
Smith? Thanks for asking. Yeah, it's a long process, but finally
stealed it off at the end oflast year and yeah it's official. Well
then I will change see you Doctoralcandidate Lawrence Smith to doctor Lawrence Smith of
CU on my blog today. Ireally appreciate it. I've got a link
again to the Daily Camera article withthe photographs in it. Mark, just
(10:37):
keep doing what you're doing, Lawrence, because I have a feeling you're going
to change the world. Thanks longmany really appreciate it all right, man,
have a great day. That isa doctor Lawrence Smith from CU Boulder
on his new invention.
Lawrence Smith is a CU doctoral candidateand he has been working with a team
to make and I'm going to usehelmets because that's really kind of what got
me going on this safer by creatingand Lawrence, please correct me if I'm
wrong better padding systems for helmets orother things that are designed to protect someone.
(00:21):
First of all, Lawrence, welcometo the show. Thanks, and
it's great to be on. Happyto be here. So you're exactly what
we're trying to do here is totake an object that's fragile and is moving
at a high speed and that comesto a stop really abruptly, And the
whole goal of this is to controlthe way that we decelerate to a full
(00:42):
stop. Materials that you see onthe market now are all phones. These
are kind of dumb materials. They'recheap, they're inexpensive, they're volume filling,
but they offer really limited control overthat deceleration. So my research that
I worked on in the final stagesof my PhD, actually i defended a
couple months ago, was all aboutdesigning new geometries, new energy absorbing geometries
(01:07):
that allow us to exert very finecontrol over these decelerations. I got to
tell you, Lawrence. When Ifirst saw the pictures of this, I
thought to myself, I wonder ifLawrence found himself in high school physics trying
to build a contraption so he coulddrop an egg off of a building,
and that started him down this pathbecause many of us in this listening audience
had to do that assignment. Iwas not successful, by the way mine
(01:32):
smashed into a million pieces. Butit's kind of the same thing, right,
I mean, it's kind of thesame fundamental underlying problem, and you've
just taken it to the next level. That's exactly right. What a great
example. In fact, I didin eighth grade do an egg drop a
great America in Santa se California.I went to high school and did pretty
(01:53):
well. Honestly, not the exactsame technique as we're publishing here in this
paper, but it's a perfect sample. How do you protect something fragile when
it decelerates really quickly? And ouranswer is to use three D printing.
We can three D print geometries thatare impossible for foams to compete with.
It's kind of a smart way tolay out geometries such that we can lower
(02:15):
the peak impact forces by up totwenty five percent the closest thing. And
I've got a link to the DailyCamera story that actually has a picture of
this foam in the story. Itkind of looks like a for lack of
a better way to put it,like a wine rack if you would with
X's It's kind of like a honeycombmeets a wine rack. And what is
(02:38):
the advantage of that kind of crosshatched a system over what foam has to
offer? Great question? So itdoes look exactly like a honeycomb panel with
some folds on the side, someorigami like folds, And the answer is
(03:00):
that, you know, let's relateit to a car. The crumple zone
in a car is to design isdesigned to absorb energy when impacted from a
frontal collision really really well. Uh, that's because we know the direction impacts
are going to come from. They'renot going to come from a piano drop
it on top of the car,So why not exert control in order to
(03:21):
have a really high performing design whenyou know the impact direction. So these
materials they look like honeycombs, sothat they perform really well when compressed in
one specific direction. And the pointis, hey, we just point that
direction where we know the impacts arecoming from. In the instance of a
helmet, we would we would tilethis pattern like a layer wrapped around the
(03:43):
head, so that any radial impactfrom any direction is going to be facing
this. This uh, this honeycombpattern. What is this? Actually?
Foam can't do that. Homes justare the same in every direction. So
it's it's really an expression of howwell we can control these geometries. What
is this actually made out of?You guys are three D printing it,
But what is the actual material thatis being that is being used to three
(04:05):
D printed? Sure, it's calleda thermoplastic polyurisane, and it's like a
rubber I think, like a rubberband. A little bit stiffer than that,
but similar, similar type of material. And the key point here is,
you know, the way we domost design is for looking for the
right material. Right, that rubberis too soft, that foam is too
(04:28):
stiff, Let's go dial in andmake a new one. This is not
what we're doing in our research.We're trying to build new geometries. Right.
We're exerting really fine geometric control overdesigns because we have three D printing
and so that just gives us awhole wealth of uh new you know,
material property portfolios you would never findout in nature. So these these things
(04:54):
we're designing, we call them metamaterials metamans beyond, because we're designing things
that exhibit properties beyond what you canfind in nature. So, how many
different how many different geometric geometric shapesdid you kind of burn through before you
settled on this particular geometric shape.Oh, that's a great question. Let
me tell you a lot. Thisis about two years of research. So
(05:17):
we printed hundreds and hundreds of samplesthat we were testing the experiments where we
drop pieces of steel on them andtake high speed video and watch that they
bounce and smash off the ground.And then also in simulation where we use
computers to predict the way that thesethings deformed. But I'm telling you hundreds
hundreds of different samples in order toarrive at the photos that you see in
(05:40):
that article. So one of theissues, and I'm going to use football
as an example because I think mostpeople understand this. When two football players
collide helmet to helmet, the issuewith the brain is actually not necessarily the
external impact, but the brain itselfslams into the inside of the skull.
So does this lessen that impact?And if so, how that is a
(06:04):
fantastic question. Yeah, so thisskull is very robust. The skull is
not going to crack on impact.It's that kind of secondary impact of the
brain decelerating against the inside of theskull. I've heard this described as the
iron Man problem. You got ironMan falling a half mile of the sky.
He hits the ground hard enough toshatter the street. The suit's fine,
(06:28):
but inside he'd be mush. Youknow your body, your brain is
way softer than the skull that surroundsit. And so the answer is we
are controlling the deceleration of the skullso that the skull sees fewer forces and
it's going to transmit those lower forcesto the brain. So an answer going
to work. Yes, this isabsolutely going to pass these benefits in force
(06:50):
reduction onto the brain. So haveyou guys had the opportunity to put this
to the test in a helmet?I mean, is that something we're going
to see going forward? And howthick does this padding have to be to
reach a level of effectiveness that itwould make a difference great question, So
on the taking the second piece first. At any thickness, these materials outperform
(07:15):
isotropic phones, So at any sicknessin any weight. That was one of
the key findings of our research.The thicker the materials of better. So
it's all about just dialing in thehigh level design requirements like the the tolerable
g forces that you can transit toa brain, and then the sickness of
(07:38):
the helmet and you will you willbasically back out like, oh, here's
how a heard of it hit Icould take With this thickness, we're you
know, I think that normal helmethas about an inch thick of padding,
so we'd probably just design around that. And that being said, we haven't
actually constructed a full prototype helmet yet. Our lab, the mac lab at
(07:59):
the university called on a Boulder,we kind of operate at the frontiers of
our knowledge, so we're not actuallydirectly commercializing this technology, although we have
lockdown a provisional patent for it already. I would love to see the Denver
Broncos reach out and say, hey, we want to work with you to
get that prototypical helmet, because I'mtalking about helmets now, but this stuff
(08:22):
has applications that go well beyond Imean, this could be used for packing
pretty much anything. And what isthis is this material? Is it recyclable,
is it biodegradable? What happens toit when we're done? When it's
useful? Lifespan is over right,So this particular material is actually really hard
to break down because we want tosustain repeated impact, right, But we
(08:45):
can three D print these geometries fromany material. Some of them are like
polylactic acid is fully bioinegradable, andso we do a lot of printing with
that as well. Here Denver Bronco'spoint, I am all in for this.
I think any any lines we candraw between research and real life applications
that get people excited, you know, where they see science really at work
(09:07):
in things they care about, likefootball, it's just a win win,
right. It's a huge benefit forlabs like ours that CU Boulder and for
you know, the end users,the applications that are actually going to benefit
in this research. I kind ofwant to just take this research off the
shelf and put it out in theworld, and so no better way to
do that than through you know,programs like this. We're republicizing and potentially
(09:31):
a partnership between the Broncos. Iall for that. Well, I don't
know if you know, but seeyou Boulder as a coach who also gets
a lot of headlines and media attention. So maybe reach out to coach Prime
and say, look, we wantto work with your football team and get
this going and let him amplify thenerdy science part. Because I think you're
right. The more people make thoseconnections between what you guys do in the
(09:54):
lab and how it directly impacts ourlives and that will inspire I hope the
next generation of scientists like you togo into this industry. And Lawrence,
I just think this is the coolestthing. I wish you continued success.
Now have you Have you been awardedyour doctorate? Are you doctor Smith yet?
Are you waiting? What is thatprocess? Now? I am doctor
(10:16):
Smith? Thanks for asking. Yeah, it's a long process, but finally
stealed it off at the end oflast year and yeah it's official. Well
then I will change see you Doctoralcandidate Lawrence Smith to doctor Lawrence Smith of
CU on my blog today. Ireally appreciate it. I've got a link
again to the Daily Camera article withthe photographs in it. Mark, just
(10:37):
keep doing what you're doing, Lawrence, because I have a feeling you're going
to change the world. Thanks longmany really appreciate it all right, man,
have a great day. That isa doctor Lawrence Smith from CU Boulder
on his new invention.
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