Translating Professional Football Helmet Tests to Full Body Finite Element (FE) Simulations: A Reproducible...

This article presents a reproducible field-to-simulation workflow that translates real football plays into solver-ready boundary conditions for a full-body finite-element human model. Single-view video reconstructs six-degree-of-freedom kinematics at the skull CG; these signals are applied to a helmet-head-body assembly that preserves event-specific hardware. The protocol codifies quality-control gates before interpretation: (I) helmet readiness (mesh integrity, contact stability), (ii) mass and center-of-gravity agreement between the physical configuration and its FE surrogate, (iii) energy balance with bounded spurious energies, (iv) driver-fidelity metrics comparing target versus solver-applied motion (RMSE, peak magnitudes, time-to-peak), and (v) versioned inputs for auditability. A demonstration replay verifies numerical stability and driver fidelity, and reports tissue-level response and diagnostic damage metrics as process outputs without making injury claims. For studies requiring internal response, the framework supports physics-based constitutive models (Internal State Variable formulations) and treats them as process diagnostics unless separately validated. By separating readiness checks from injury interpretation, the method provides a practical foundation to standardize helmet integration, enable cross-laboratory reproducibility for event scenarios, and inform safer design and policy. Although developed for sport, the workflow generalizes to transportation and defense settings where ethical constraints prevent human experimentation.