Age has No Effect on the Impact Performance of Field-Used Hockey Helmets

The goal of our study is to evaluate whether impact attenuation, as measured by peak linear acceleration (PLA), degrades over the expected usage life of field-used hockey helmets at both the certification impact speed of 4.5 m/s and at a lower-severity impact of 3 m/s.

Field-used helmets were collected from the public and other agencies. The impact testing protocol was adapted from CSA Z262.1-15 and ASTM F1045-16. Helmets were impacted at the rear, side, and front. General linear mixed models were used to assess the effect of age and other covariates (liner material, headform size, helmet wear) on peak linear acceleration.

Over 8000 impact tests were conducted on 762 new and field-used helmets. No significant increases or decreases in PLA with helmet age were observed at any of the impact sites or impact speeds. A few helmet shells cracked in our impact tests.

We evaluated the effect of age on the PLA response of hockey helmets in 4.5 m/s and 3.0 m/s impacts from a large sample of field-used hockey helmets. We found no support for our hypothesis that PLA increases with age. Users should continue to remove helmets from service when they are in poor condition.