Accelerations relevant to blunt trauma: theory and data

Maximum acceleration and the head injury criterion (HIC) are both used as indicators of likely head injury severity. A dataset has previously been published of impacts of an instrumented missile on four ground surfaces having a layer of between 0 and 16 cm of sand. The dataset is compared with recently-developed theory that predicts power-function dependence of maximum acceleration and HIC on drop height. That prediction was supported by the data. The surfaces differed in respect of the exponents estimated.