Forearm Impactor Tests for Development of Injury Risk Assessment Capability

Paper in proceeding, 2022

The forearm is one of the most injured body regions. To enable injury risk assessment a component test method using a novel instrumented forearm impactor was proposed. Impact tests with the forearm were carried out replicating published human subject impact tests. The forearm impactor elbow was mounted to a force transducer and a reaction plate assembly free to move along linear guide rails. The impact load was provided by a guided mass dropped from various heights. The drop heights were selected to generate elbow plate forces including both fractures and no fractures in the published tests. Tests were run with two boundary conditions. The peak elbow plate forces ranged from 1.6 kN to 8.6 kN. The peak axial forces in the internal forearm loadcell varied from 1.9 kN to 9.7 kN. A linear relationship was defined between the forces recorded in the two loadcells for each boundary condition. The linear relationship was developed to aid in translating the published forearm fracture risk curve to facilitate in predicting forearm fracture risk with the forearm impactor in axial impacts with an outstretched hand. The novel instrumented forearm impactor in combination with the injury prediction capability can be used to evaluate forearm fracture risk in hand impacts.