Two Liberty High graduates earned a U.S. patent on a honeycomb helmet design that would absorb impact and reduce concussions among baseball players.
Joseph Barlow and Sid Tekumalla, class of 2023, invented the helmet design during their senior year engineering capstone course.
Although neither inventor plays baseball, Barlow is a Phillies fan who aims to make the game safer.
“I always didn’t like it when a player would go down with an injury,” Barlow said. “After more research, we realized how preventable it was.”
In their patent application, Barlow and Tekumalla state that more than 240,000 baseball- and softball-related traumatic brain injuries were recorded between 1982 and 2015, data that aligns with a 2017 literature review in the Frontiers in Neurology.
Younger players most often suffered an injury after being hit by a bat, while post-adolescent athletes were more likely to suffer head injuries after being hit by a ball, the study states.
To address the risk of ball strikes against a player’s head, Tekumalla took inspiration from work done at the University of Texas to develop a honeycomb structure capable of absorbing impact.
The patented design uses nylon materials to construct the honeycomb, which sits in the helmet, and adds exterior protrusions that help carry the force of the impact away from a player’s head.
The inventors calculated that the most effective angle to connect the interior honeycomb to the exterior protrusions is about 15-25 degrees. The goal is to reduce the overall impact force by at least 80%.
Barlow and Tekumalla started the testing process using materials they 3-D printed at school and a baseball pitching machine.
An adviser, Frank Schweighardt, helped connect the students with industry professionals who completed further testing.
The resulting device is scalable so it can be adapted to both youth and adult helmets.
“We’re going to be looking for companies to sell it to,” Barlow said.
Attorney Jim McDaniel assisted Barlow and Tekumalla as they went through the multiyear process of securing a patent.
Now that the design is patented, companies can reach out to the inventors if they want to pay to complete further testing or buy a full license of the technology, Schweighardt said.
Schweighardt, who worked for Air Products for 29 years before taking a leadership role at the Da Vinci Science Center, advised Barlow and Tekumalla as part of a program he developed to shepherd students through the patent process. That program has now earned a dozen patents.
“My role was to make sure they’re asking the right questions,” Schweighardt said.
Making an impact
Determining when the interior padding of a helmet has been damaged enough that it has become ineffective can be tricky, Liberty High School Athletic Director Fred Harris said.
Harris, who has baseball coaching experience, said helmets are sent to a third-party inspector at the end of each season to determine if they can be recertified as safe for another season. Barlow and Tekumalla’s invention could extend the lifespan of helmets, Harris said.
“They’re a true example of kids that had an idea and used science and our science program here to pursue a passion,” Harris said, “and I think it’s really cool that two kids from Liberty High School pursued their passion and potentially have made an entire sports industry safer.”
Barlow has earned pilot licenses through his aviation studies at the Florida Institute of Technology. He will graduate this spring and aims to pursue a career as a flight instructor.
Tekumalla is a junior at Penn State, studying computer and data science.
They both credit their Liberty High engineering courses with imparting technical knowledge that continues to benefit their studies.
Barlow said his engineering background has made him better able to identify mechanical issues on planes.
“I think the best thing engineering taught me was problem solving,” he said.
The two also credited Liberty High instructors Walter Marshaleck, Maclean Pearson and Kristin Stuby for effectively building their engineering knowledge.
“Sid and Joseph are highly motivated young men who persevered through the patent process to obtain a patent on their PLTW capstone engineering project,” Stuby said in a news release. “I facilitated and led them through the engineering design process, which gave them the foundation to pursue their idea after graduation. What excites me most is that the small-scale testing they conducted in a high school setting was later confirmed through large-scale, industry-standard testing.”
