Equestrian Safety Vests
During the summer between my third and fourth year of my undergraduate, I completed a 3 month summer scholarship with the University of Edinburgh School of Engineering.
In collaboration with an industry company, I developed a set of numerical models for evaluating the effectiveness of foam and airbag equestrian protective vests.
Using LS-Dyna, constitutive models for the materials used in the vests were validated against the drop weight tests outlined in EN 13158.
Representative models of the protective gear were equipped to the Hybrid III dummy model.
Scenarios replicating impacts with a fence post and between horse and ground were modelled for both vest types in order to examine their effectiveness in reducing the forces experienced by the rib cage.
A short summary document with some of the key numerical results can be downloaded here
The work has been featured in an article in the Scottish Farmer.
