Making bicycle helmets cool to wear – Information Centre – Research & Innovation

© WavebreakmediaMicro #128760444, resource:inventory.adobe.com 2020
Provided an choice involving security and comfort and ease, some people are likely to opt for comfort and ease. The exact same is correct when it will come to bicycle helmets, which are likely to come to feel as well warm following lengthy or intensive rides. The form and non-optimised vents in the helmet as very well as the insulated liners normally conclusion up trapping considerably as well considerably warmth.
Individuals commuting to get the job done on a bike, for instance, do not want a sweaty head and tussled hair mainly because of donning a helmet. With out compromising security, researchers ended up challenged to make the helmets a lot cooler to use. The predicament was tackled by the EU-funded SMARTHELMET challenge which brought together investigation and business industry experts to come up with a novel answer.
SMARTHELMET challenge targeted on creating helmets with lively thermal administration, where by the air flow can be controlled autonomously based on a riders cooling requirements, suggests challenge coordinator Tiago Sotto Mayor of the University of Porto in Portugal.
By creating and creating new helmets that are cooler and additional comfortable, the hope is that several additional will start out donning them. Extra bikers imply a additional lively population and probably cleaner air for those people who opt for no longer to commute by auto. In addition, engineering that could save lives is not only clever but is also socially accountable.
Moreover, helmets are passive objects with a preset geometry and form which can not adapt to riders diverse thermal environments and air flow requirements, suggests Sotto Mayor.
Cooler heads prevail
Conventional helmets serve only to safeguard a persons head. So making a single that can also perception, forecast and adapt its air flow to the cooling requirements of a rider involves a lot of abilities.
For SMARTHELMET, this meant very first bringing together a combine of industry experts in biomechanics, electronics, thermo-regulation, engineering, producing and innovation.
SMARTHELMET researchers then built-in electronics into bicycle helmets to allow actual-time sensing of physiological and environmental parameters. These parameters integrated coronary heart level, temperature and relative humidity, which ended up made use of to gauge a riders warmth output and varying cooling requirements.
We investigated strategies to adapt the helmet air flow via improvements in the options of its vents and linked their operation with the riders thermo-regulation requirements, suggests Sotto Mayor.
The results ended up then built-in into an progressive helmet strategy to optimise air flow via sensing, electronics and clever operation. The strategy also took in other things like surrounding environmental disorders and the cyclists level of bodily action.
Over and above biking
LAZER, a enterprise that styles and sells bicycle helmets in additional than 65 international locations spread in excess of 5 continents, was also involved in the challenge. Sotto Mayor describes the agency as a all-natural companion to convert the investigation into progressive clever bicycle helmets.
Nonetheless, he also notes that the investigation has a substantial opportunity in other sectors as very well, which includes objects this sort of as motorbike helmets, industrial protecting headgear and even protecting clothing.
The opportunity affect of the get the job done developed in the SMARTHELMET challenge goes outside of the biking entire world, he provides, noting that the challenge has also offered youthful researchers a wonderful chance for palms-on knowledge throughout diverse sectors.