Massa suffers serious injury - helmet strike by Barrichello's broken suspension

[NathanE]

what you don't take into account from the surtees perspective is what is available to absorb that energy.  If you have lots of nice deformable energy absorbing materials around (like a helmet as you mention for Massa) then the physical damage to the body can be much reduced.  That's why F1 drivers survive crashes at 60m/s (roughly 135mph) in a 750kg car = 1,350,000 joules. 

[Bruce Fielding]

[quote="fiestycolumbian"]
- The spring that hit Massa (800 grams at 160 mph): 2,046 joules

[/quote]

You sure?

I haven't seen anyone recording how fast the spring was going, and in which direction...

[jon b]

[quote="Mr.Toad"]
what you don't take into account from the surtees perspective is what is available to absorb that energy.  If you have lots of nice deformable energy absorbing materials around (like a helmet as you mention for Massa) then the physical damage to the body can be much reduced. 
[/quote]

I suspect its not so much the force but the amount of deceleration.  With Massa the wall seemed to do a reasonable job of controlled deceleration, hence the lack of deformation to the cockpit.  If the G hadn't been controlled to some degree, the cockpit would have deformed.  So the jolt of impact would have been controlled and not as severe as it could have been.  The HANS will have certainly done its job too.

The impact to the helmet exceeded its impact spec, its looks like the spring actually went all the way through the helmet and cracked his skull.  The helmet was not up to the job

[benyeats]

[quote="jon b"]
The impact to the helmet exceeded its impact spec, its looks like the spring actually went all the way through the helmet and cracked his skull.  The helmet was not up to the job
[/quote]

The problem with impacts to the head, particularly prevelant in seasoned boxers, is not always the strike to the surface but the impact causing the brain to smash into the skull, you can't really do anything about this one helmet or otherwise.

Ben

[NathanE]

[quote="jon b"]
[quote="Mr.Toad"]
what you don't take into account from the surtees perspective is what is available to absorb that energy.  If you have lots of nice deformable energy absorbing materials around (like a helmet as you mention for Massa) then the physical damage to the body can be much reduced. 
[/quote]

I suspect its not so much the force but the amount of deceleration.  With Massa the wall seemed to do a reasonable job of controlled deceleration, hence the lack of deformation to the cockpit. 
[/quote]

Exactly my point, hence not using the word force in my post but energy.  The car survived as well as it did becasue there was lots of energy absorbing material (tyre wall) to dissipate the energy.  If somehow the shell material of the helmet had been able to spread the load of the impacting spring over a greater area, then the energy absorbing foam within might have been able to disspate the energy to a point where injury was avoided.  It is very hard to spread a point load over a sufficiently large area to do this though, which is why AFAIK bullet proof and stab proof jackets have very different designs.