Injury Biomechanics and Protection Group

The Injury Biomechanics and Protection Group (IBPG) mission is to enhance Warfighter lethality, protection, and survivability for the battlefields of the future through next-generation biomechanical research. IBPG's primary threat-based competency is blunt, blast, and accelerative injury and protection. Additional competencies include: crew survival in military helicopters and combat vehicles, physical simulation of military aviation and ground environments, and biomechanical modeling.

IBPG specializes in biomechanical research that contributes specifically to three of the six modernization priorities including Soldier Lethality, Future Vertical Lift, and Next-Generation Combat Vehicles.

Our multi-disciplinary research group is comprised of members from biomedical, mechanical, aerospace, human factors, and electrical engineering as well as aviation medicine, kinesiology, mathematics, computer science, and chemistry backgrounds. Our group is divided into six teams:

• Survival Analysis Team (SAT)

  SAT's research, in partnership with the Joint Trauma Analysis and Prevention of Injury in Combat (JTAPIC) program, focuses on linking medical, operational, and materiel data to create comprehensive epidemiological reports directed at reducing traumatic injuries to both aviation and ground Soldiers.

• Biodynamics Data Resource and Analysis (BDR)

  The BDR team maintains and conducts research on one of the largest data repositories in existence of biodynamic exposure and response data from human research volunteers and human surrogates. The data repository includes data from the Naval Biodynamics Laboratory (NBDL) of physiological and injurious responses to whole body acceleration (frontal, vertical, lateral, off-axis), early Warrior Injury Assessment Manikin (WIAMan) studies, and IBPG blunt, blast, and accelerative research projects.

• Accelerative Injury Research (AIR)

  AIR's research focuses on injury prevention to Warfighters exposed to high accelerative loading as a result of aviation or ground vehicle mishaps or underbody blast.

• Soldier Monitoring and Applied Research Telemetry Team (SMART)

  SMART's core research focuses on the use of wearable technology (e.g., environmental sensors), biomedical instrumentation, and injury and performance assessments (e.g., musculoskeletal and neurophysiological assessments) to measure the operational exposure to military personnel and the biomedical response of military personnel to inform the development of health hazard assessments, injury criteria, and personal protective equipment performance standards recommendations.

• Blunt Impact Injury Prevention Team (BIIPT)

  BIIPT's core research focuses on preventing Warfighter injury from blunt (non-penetrating) impacts resulting from the full spectrum of operational hazards, including slips, trips, falls, mishaps involving aviation or ground vehicle platforms, or low-rate, non-penetrating ballistic impacts to the body.

• Musculoskeletal Injury Prevention and Protection (MSKIPP)

  MSKIPP Team conducts field- and lab-based biomechanics research related to examining spinal musculoskeletal response and contributions to operational performance decrements due to head-supported mass and military environment exposures.

Currently, our researchers are investigating injury mechanisms and tolerances of the neck and spine, head and brain, and face and eye injuries to develop operationally relevant spinal injury criteria and spinal health hazard assessments, as well as head-supported mass guidelines for Soldiers in ground and aviation environments, as well as standardized mass properties methodology for head-supported mass assessments. Additionally, IBPG is assessing the effectiveness of proposed protective countermeasures for our Warfighters through evaluations of new or modified personal protective equipment and environmental sensors, as well as crash and incident investigations using engineering, medical, and injury epidemiology analyses for ground, airborne, and aviation.

IBPG maintains its unique capabilities and competencies to conduct research on Soldier injury mechanisms, human tolerance levels, injury risk mitigation technologies, and health hazards present in the full spectrum of Army operational and training environments.

Specific facilities and capabilities include:

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