Z1R

[The Buddha]

That may actually be better than a shoei ...  :lol:  ... Chrome Dome ...
Cool.
Srinath.

[The Buddha]

Oddly, motorcyclist blew the opportunity to subject the DOT polycarbonates to a double-impact test.  Perhaps the findings wouldn't have advanced the editorial slant?

And that editorial slant point - I missed entirely ... see I can see if they favored the shoei, or the Icon or the scorpion even in that aspect ... these companies spend Tons of $$$ on the full page and pull outs in the Rags ... it does work in their favor to talk these up ... Z1R - never have I even heard of them before that article ... so only way there is slant ... If I see that Z1R is paying up big to advertise in the mag in the next few months - whihc I haven't seen in the recent past ...
I however cant wait for the next gen of helmets ... In the mean time I am using my super hard Bieffe GPR ... and when I get my next gen helmet ... I will film the helmet fight ... hit the bieffe with the shoei and vice versa ... till one of them busts ... then I will hit till it gets destroyed ...
Cool.
Srinath.

[Gisser]

And that editorial slant point - I missed entirely ... see I can see if they favored the shoei, or the Icon or the scorpion even in that aspect ... these companies spend Tons of $$$ on the full page and pull outs in the Rags ... it does work in their favor to talk these up ... Z1R - never have I even heard of them before that article ...
Cool.
Srinath.

The slant was toward sensationalism.  It wasn't enough to put forth the proposition that the minimalist DOT standard was actually superior to the highly regarded and rigorous Snell standard (the implication being that high-end name-brand helmets were less safe than Pep Boys' blue light specials) they also had to sex-up the article suggesting that the polycarbonate shell itself was superior to the hand laminated composites without any proof.  That theory quietly backfired in their faces in the follow-up article where the flexibility of the polycarbonate shells are shown to concentrate impact force into a smaller area while the latest thinking in safety designs are shown to have stiff composite shells and soft liners which dissipate impact force over a broader area.  This is diametrically opposed to the assumption made in the original article.

Snell is dead.  That's the real story.  Over-eager motojournalists cost magazine ad revenue.  That's the rest of the story.  

[porsche4786]

I should be getting my new shoei rf-1000 in the mail tomorrow! I can't wait! Right now I have some cheapo helmet that is snell2000 and dot approved the brand is AFX it was only $65 off of ebay from dennis kirk, never really heard of them...

[The Buddha]

And that editorial slant point - I missed entirely ... see I can see if they favored the shoei, or the Icon or the scorpion even in that aspect ... these companies spend Tons of $$$ on the full page and pull outs in the Rags ... it does work in their favor to talk these up ... Z1R - never have I even heard of them before that article ...
Cool.
Srinath.

The slant was toward sensationalism.  It wasn't enough to put forth the proposition that the minimalist DOT standard was actually superior to the highly regarded and rigorous Snell standard (the implication being that high-end name-brand helmets were less safe than Pep Boys' blue light specials) they also had to sex-up the article suggesting that the polycarbonate shell itself was superior to the hand laminated composites without any proof.  That theory quietly backfired in their faces in the follow-up article where the flexibility of the polycarbonate shells are shown to concentrate impact force into a smaller area while the latest thinking in safety designs are shown to have stiff composite shells and soft liners which dissipate impact force over a broader area.  This is diametrically opposed to the assumption made in the original article.

Snell is dead.  That's the real story.  Over-eager motojournalists cost magazine ad revenue.  That's the rest of the story.  

OK Fine sensationalism ... However I am not buying thinking any thing else of what you said is valid in this post ...
Why ... The about face IMHO isn't a real about face at all ... The super duper schumacher helmets aren't fiberglass ... they are Kevlar and carbon fiber ... the same material that my BR 16 was made of and the same material that my new bieffe GPR is made of. The huge difference is ... the harder material like CF or Kevlar exibits elastic failure as well ... Fiberglass doesn't ... It exibits plastic failure, as in it absorbs energy in the shell and deforms and cracks and delaminates. That has effectively been tossed out as worthless. The EPS material inside a Poly carbonate shell which also exibits elastic failure is far superior than the same EPS inside a Fiberglass shell which exibits plastic failure. If you want to have a shell that has a harder elastic failure do a kevlar shell and to take care of your melon ... you need a better material than EPS. Fiberglass helmets broke under the hardest impact and they transmitted more G's to the head than the Poly which didn't break ... I'd say they lose on both counts.
Cool.
Srinath.

[Gisser]

OK Fine sensationalism ... However I am not buying thinking any thing else of what you said is valid in this post ...
Why ... The about face IMHO isn't a real about face at all ... The super duper schumacher helmets aren't fiberglass ... they are Kevlar and carbon fiber ... the same material that my BR 16 was made of and the same material that my new bieffe GPR is made of. The huge difference is ... the harder material like CF or Kevlar exibits elastic failure as well ... Fiberglass doesn't ... It exibits plastic failure, as in it absorbs energy in the shell and deforms and cracks and delaminates. That has effectively been tossed out as worthless. The EPS material inside a Poly carbonate shell which also exibits elastic failure is far superior than the same EPS inside a Fiberglass shell which exibits plastic failure. If you want to have a shell that has a harder elastic failure do a kevlar shell and to take care of your melon ... you need a better material than EPS. Fiberglass helmets broke under the hardest impact and they transmitted more G's to the head than the Poly which didn't break ... I'd say they lose on both counts.

* Please, it's delamination.  Might as well use the appropriate terminology supplied to us by the magazine article.  Broke implies failure and yet the Snell FG's are required to survive not 1 but 2 high energy impacts in the same area.  Some FG's transmitted more G's than Poly's and some did not.  That's already been established.  The Z1R performed well partly because of its monstrous exterior dimensions which leaves the wearer looking like a space alien.  :lol:

* Carbon fiber versus fiberglass

I read up.  Carbon fiber has the highest specific stiffness of any commercially available fiber and very high strength in both tension and compression. It's impact strength, however, is lower than fiberglass.  CF shatters.

Your CF Bieffe ( :lol: ) for example is combined with Kevlar to contain the pointy CF shards in the event of an overwhelming impact.  

Fiberglass can also undergo more elongation than CF before it breaks.  So much for elastic VS plastic failure (    ).

The Schumacher superhelmet may be CF but 1 of the other advanced technology prototypes mentioned in the follow-up article used a highly rigid fiberglass shell.   It's all about the liner.  Of course, none of the superhelmets were molded plastic.  

* Now, back to the contradiction.   Motorcyclist claimed that Poly's flex rather than crush and delaminate, and this flexing, far from being a problem actually lets the EPS do more of its job of energy absorption.  How?  They say it's because flexing allows the EPS to start doing its work earlier.  :lol:   Nonsense.  I'll tell you what, the flexing concentrates the energy to a smaller area which delivers more PSI to that particular section of EPS in effect making the liner behave softer.  The drawback is that the force of impact is similarly concentrated on a smaller region of the vulnerable skull.   This is why I say that no one racing at a world class level does so wearing a molded plastic helmet.  

[The Buddha]

OK Fine sensationalism ... However I am not buying thinking any thing else of what you said is valid in this post ...
Why ... The about face IMHO isn't a real about face at all ... The super duper schumacher helmets aren't fiberglass ... they are Kevlar and carbon fiber ... the same material that my BR 16 was made of and the same material that my new bieffe GPR is made of. The huge difference is ... the harder material like CF or Kevlar exibits elastic failure as well ... Fiberglass doesn't ... It exibits plastic failure, as in it absorbs energy in the shell and deforms and cracks and delaminates. That has effectively been tossed out as worthless. The EPS material inside a Poly carbonate shell which also exibits elastic failure is far superior than the same EPS inside a Fiberglass shell which exibits plastic failure. If you want to have a shell that has a harder elastic failure do a kevlar shell and to take care of your melon ... you need a better material than EPS. Fiberglass helmets broke under the hardest impact and they transmitted more G's to the head than the Poly which didn't break ... I'd say they lose on both counts.

* Please, it's delamination.  Might as well use the appropriate terminology supplied to us by the magazine article.  Broke implies failure and yet the Snell FG's are required to survive not 1 but 2 high energy impacts in the same area.  Some FG's transmitted more G's than Poly's and some did not.  That's already been established.  The Z1R performed well partly because of its monstrous exterior dimensions which leaves the wearer looking like a space alien.  :lol:

* Carbon fiber versus fiberglass

I read up.  Carbon fiber has the highest specific stiffness of any commercially available fiber and very high strength in both tension and compression. It's impact strength, however, is lower than fiberglass.  CF shatters.

Your CF Bieffe ( :lol: ) for example is combined with Kevlar to contain the pointy CF shards in the event of an overwhelming impact.  

Fiberglass can also undergo more elongation than CF before it breaks.  So much for elastic VS plastic failure (    ).

The Schumacher superhelmet may be CF but 1 of the other advanced technology prototypes mentioned in the follow-up article used a highly rigid fiberglass shell.   It's all about the liner.  Of course, none of the superhelmets were molded plastic.  

* Now, back to the contradiction.   Motorcyclist claimed that Poly's flex rather than crush and delaminate, and this flexing, far from being a problem actually lets the EPS do more of its job of energy absorption.  How?  They say it's because flexing allows the EPS to start doing its work earlier.  :lol:   Nonsense.  I'll tell you what, the flexing concentrates the energy to a smaller area which delivers more PSI to that particular section of EPS in effect making the liner behave softer.  The drawback is that the force of impact is similarly concentrated on a smaller region of the vulnerable skull.   This is why I say that no one racing at a world class level does so wearing a molded plastic helmet.  

They said delamination but they showed a Fiberglass helmet that had split ... it had a crack in it ... if you wanna call that delamination sure go ahead ...
Carbon fiber has higher modulus of elasticity ... and its impact strength is lower ... what exactly is impact strength in terms of physics. Shear ... and yea CF and kevlar are always used in conjunction, Kevlar is if I remember the material to resist shear. Also CF and kevlar helmets weight more than the fiberglass ones ... almost 2X ... the reason I beleive is because of the fact that it is much harder to work with and they cannot weave it into a thin shell. Fiberglass is great for that. Elongation is strain in physics, and higher strain before failure is not the definition of plastic failure. Elastic or plastic failure is defined by the criteria that strain disappears once the stress is removed = elastic, not is plastic and poly carbonate is elastic and fiberglass is plastic, well known fact. With CF/Kev blends ... depends on the mix I should say what the youngs modulus is and what the elastic vs plastic criteria is. BTW elastic in one zone of stress and plastic following that is also another of the physical properties of materials. Pull it to the elastic limit and its going to fully bounce back, pull it past that and it will acquire a "set". That would mean just CF has a lower youngs modulus than fiberglass but says nothing about plastic or elastic.
Flexing does not neccesarily concentrate the forces into a smaller area. There is a phenomenon called punching shear. That will concentrate it on the tiniest area. The materials that exibit shear failure will obviously be the most susceptible to it, the fact the fiberglass delaminates makes it very likely to shear failure and it does make this likely as well. The edge impact that caused the fiberglass helmets to break is also a clear case of shear failure. Poly's did not break in that test ... I dont think poly's are likely to concentrate the impact in any situation.
No one is wearing a Plastic helmet of course. Its poly carbonate and its entirely different from plastic and of course no one is wearing one of those either. Shoei and arai are all the "Racers" like to wear ... those 2 have had such a head start in the helmet business agreed in the 60-70's they were the best around but after better and newer manufacturers came up with better products, they have effectively misinformed the people through dealers and they have cut in the dealers on the action in large markup's and effectively conned the public. There is a wee bit of inside information here. The SV 1000's were cleared out last year by my local stealer, 5999 for the S and 5499 for the non S. In fact they went as low as 5299 for the last few non S's, they sold 55+ of them last year. The parts manager said they were making under 350 on each. If a guy came in and bought a SV and a helmet, jacket and gloves and they got him up to a shoei and added that into the financing deal, on a $500 helmet they made 250. jacket and gloves could add up another 100 and essentially they made more on the gear than the bike. If he bought a $80 fulmer, they made nothing ... maybe $10. Essentially that is some serious incentive. I'd ask you 1 simple question ... why are harley dealers such assholes ... simple, they dont care about bikes, they wanna sell you useless crap over and over and over ... chrome air cleaner cover bolt cover ... ride down the street and it falls off ... OOps ... gotta but another one ... same thing with shoei and arai. Jap dealers are even bigger assholes in some respects ... they'd sell a GSXR 1000 to a total 16 yr old newb, and sell him a shoei helmet cos he has such a high performance bike ... and besides it matches the bike ... he crashes it leaving the parking lot, and they go ooops ... yea you gotta get it fixed and need a new helmet there buddy ... Shoei and arai probably invented the modern helmet - of the ones left standing today ... but they have looooonnnng since abandoned true research and gone the harley way (whihc if you recall invented the motorcycle too - yea sorta of the ones left standing today )
Cool.
Srinath.