Purpose: Aim of the paper is to show impact testing experimental results useful to highlight major limitations of passive safety standards for sports equipment and surfaces. These results can be the starting point to define new methods for the assessment and the improvement of passive safety in sports applications, helping technicians in selecting protection devices and in setting functional requirements. Method: Experimental tests were carried out through a low-velocity impact testing apparatus, conceived and built in the laboratories of Chemnitz University of Technology. In particular, adopting ASTM F1292 test procedure, the absorption properties of the impact of five polymerbased foams architectures used to cover sports equipment, were tested. These properties are evaluated on the base of impact measures correlated to different level of head injuries. These represent, in fact, the most severe risks to the athlete healthy in case of human body impact. Result: The results of the experimental tests showed that, in order to optimize the choice of protection devices on the base of impact absorption properties, it needs to consider together acceleration peak, drop height and Head Injury Criterion (HIC) values. Discussion&Conclusion: The joint use of these three parameters is necessary both for producers and technicians in product development process and application, respectively. It was shown that device performances depend on drop height magnitude: for each sport discipline, it is important to define the critical fall height of use or the maximum impact energy amount which could be experienced by athletes during sport practice. Finally, a new injury risk index, functionally related to previous performance parameters and a simple eco-sustainable approach in selecting the optimal device were proposed.
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