Vibration testing of a football helmet

Dear All

please find a link to a story describing the results of a final project that I assigned for my graduate "Experimental Structural Dynamics" class. This is timely, on this Superbowl Sunday and the broad coverage of safety issues related to Football and head injuries.

http://coe.gatech.edu/content/tech-research-holds-key-better-football-he...

This is a nice example of full field detection and visualization of vibrational modes detected using a Scanning Laser Vibrometer. Given that the helmet is far from a flat surface of the kind typically measured using Laser Vibrometry, these tests required our patient and very skilled students to divide the helmet in many approximately flat patches, which were then stiched together on top of the digitalized helmet geometry. This was a very good exercise in coding in addition to a good practice of experimental methods.

Happy Superbowl to everyone