Impact testing PPE for motorcyclists

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MGF07
 
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Impact testing PPE for motorcyclists

Post by MGF07 »

Hi all,

I’m an early retired teacher but I’m conducting unfounded research which I hope will be useful for motorcycle riders. I test motorcycle riders garments and samples of materials used in protective clothing for impact abrasion resistance. I built a road drop tester mounted on a scooter, basically an inverted pendulum drop tester. At the moment, I can only collect video and visual evidence which is useful. However, I’d like to add sensors to the mechanism to record the forces involved. First of all, an accelerometer for impact forces, GPS for forward speed. Later, I’d like to add temperature sensing. All this needs to be recorded with a high frequency since the test only lasts a few seconds and high impacts generally 4ms. So 1000hz or higher would be needed for an accelerometer. The forces would be pretty high, possibly up to about 100g. The electronics would need to stand this force but a data recorder could be mounted away from the pendulum, if necessary, to avoid repeated shock.

Any tips where to start?

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adafruit_support_bill
 
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Re: Impact testing PPE for motorcyclists

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

A GPS is not a good choice for measuring speed over small distances. The positional resolution is relatively coarse and any noise in the system will have you moving in random directions when stationary. For an inverted pendulum, a gyro would be a better choice. You can derive the speed at the end of the pendulum from the rate of rotation.

We have a number of accelerometer breakouts, as well as some IMU boards containing accelerometers, gyros and magnetometers.
https://www.adafruit.com/?q=acceleromet ... =BestMatch
https://www.adafruit.com/?q=imu&sort=BestMatch

The Feather Adalogger would be a good choice for recording the results: https://www.adafruit.com/product/2796

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MGF07
 
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Re: Impact testing PPE for motorcyclists

Post by MGF07 »

Thank you for your quick response. Forward speed is not that important so I’m not really worried about that aspect. However, I’d need an accelerometer which can measure higher forces, let’s say +/- 50g, +/- 100g, +/-200g. The ones you mentioned seem to be up to +/- 16g. Any suggestions there?

Also, I’d like to measure temperature “at the skin” but under fabric or BANNED. So an impact resistant thermocouple (or similar function) would be required. Do you have anything like that?

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sj_remington
 
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Re: Impact testing PPE for motorcyclists

Post by sj_remington »

There are a number of consumer grade accelerometer modules capable of measuring +/-200 g at 1 kHz sample frequency. The ADXL375 (digital) /ADXL377 (analog) have been around for years, and are intended for applications such as you describe. They are simple to interface to an Arduino.

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adafruit_support_bill
 
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Re: Impact testing PPE for motorcyclists

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

We have the ADXL377 which does 200G: https://www.adafruit.com/product/1413

There are lots of temperature sensing options: https://www.adafruit.com/category/56
The MCP9808 would be a good choice.: https://www.adafruit.com/product/1782

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jalenyoung
 
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Re: Impact testing PPE for motorcyclists

Post by jalenyoung »

We have to use a accelerator sensor in our project which model is adxl 377. We decide to buy it in the adafruit and we need more details like the unit of the dimension and the dimension between the pin vin and pin 3v
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adafruit_support_bill
 
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Re: Impact testing PPE for motorcyclists

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

The header pins are 0.1" (2.54mm) pitch.

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