Thermal Performance Of Equestrian Helmets

The cooling performance of three equestrian helmets was investigated within this research. The helmets were evaluated for their capacity to remove convective heat loss in the scalp area with the use of a thermal manikin head with nine thermal zones. The manikin head was placed in a climate chamber with an open loop wind tunnel. Ambient air temperature was 20 degrees C, air velocity was 6 ms(-1). Two commercially available equestrian helmets were included (one closed, one vented) in the study and one custom made equestrian helmet. The custom made helmet was optimized using design criteria for bicycle helmets. Cooling performance is a measure for quantifying the ability of a helmet to remove heat as compared to a nude manikin head under identical environmental conditions.The closed equestrian helmet had a cooling performance of 56% (22,6 W). The open equestrian helmet had a cooling performance of 86% (32,9 W), and the custom helmet had a cooling performance of 97% (38, 1 W). The results show that cooling performance of equestrian helmets can be improved with use of design guidelines that are used in bicycle helmets. Most equestrian helmet may currently not yet have specified inlets, outlets and internal channels that connect inlets with outlets.