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Biomechanics Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Biomechanics

Physical Testing Of Potential Football Helmet Design Enhancements, Michael Jeremy Schuster Jun 2016

Physical Testing Of Potential Football Helmet Design Enhancements, Michael Jeremy Schuster

Master's Theses

Football is a much loved sport in the United States. Unfortunately, it is also hard on the players and puts them at very high risk of concussion. To combat this an inventor in Santa Barbara brought a new design to Cal Poly to be tested.

The design was tested in small scale first in order to make some preliminary conclusions about the design. In order to fully test the helmet design; however, full scale testing was required. In order to carry out this testing a drop tower was built based on National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment, NOCSAE, …


Biomechanical Investigation Of Elite Place-Kicking, Chase M. Pfeifer Nov 2015

Biomechanical Investigation Of Elite Place-Kicking, Chase M. Pfeifer

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Many studies aim to understand the fundamentals of kicking commonly displayed by soccer players [4,6,10,16,17,18,24,25,28,29,30,34,36,38,40]. Of those studies, most are limited to a two-dimensional (2D) analysis using high-speed cameras for position tracking or utilizing electromyography to observe the activity of select muscles [4,6,18,25,29,36]. The few studies that investigate kicking using a three-dimensional (3D) model are limited in their position tracking capabilities and focus mainly on joint flexion potentials and foot speed.

This dissertation is a comprehensive biomechanical analysis (kinematic and EMG) of the field-goal place-kicking techniques of four elite kickers in American football. Data were compared and contrasted with ball …