Padded rugby clothing to prevent laceration and abrasion injuries from stud raking: a method of assessment

Abstract

Padded clothing (shoulder padding) is worn in Rugby Union to give players an opportunity to protect themselves. A performance specification for padded clothing has been set out by World Rugby™, with the intention that padded clothing only protects against lacerations and abrasions. Test protocols in this specification provide an assessment of the impact force attenuative properties of the material, this itself will not indicate what injuries they may have the potential to prevent or lessen the severity of. The current study has used previously established biomechanical parameters to develop a mechanical test procedure to assess the ability of padded clothing to prevent or lessen the severity of stud-induced laceration and abrasion injuries. A synthetic skin and soft tissue surrogate was developed and validated to mimic human anatomy. Without the addition of padded clothing, both wearing (abrasion) and tearing (laceration) of the synthetic tissue surrogate were seen. The addition of padded clothing saw no sign of stud-induced injury, even after six repeated trials of the same product, showing padded clothing can prevent or lessen the severity of lacerations and abrasions. The developed testing protocols could be used to assess the safety of any sports stud designs in relation to skin injury as well as the effectiveness of various protective clothing products across the sports industry.

Finite element model to simulate impact on a soft tissue simulant

“…Indeed, Hughes et al [7] developed a relaxed muscle simulant (by mixing silicones) for assessing the ability of rugby body padding to prevent injury. In recent work investigating raking injuries from studs, Hughes et al [8] covered the muscle simulant with a layer of synthetic chamois leather to represent skin [9,10]. Placing such a synthetic tissue or silicone over a metal anvil, whilst not completely mimicking the shoulder anatomy, would give a more biofidelic anvil than the metal cylinder currently used in the WR-BPPS.…”

“…The aim of this paper was to develop an FE model to simulate impact tests on an anvil that was more biofidelic than the current metal one in WR-BPPS. The anvil consisted of a metal hemicylindrical core covered with the silicone reported by Hughes et al [7,8] and a synthetic chamois leather to mimic skin [9,10]. An initial stage in developing such an FE model was to identify a suitable material model for predicting the impact response of the silicone.…”