Traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) from high-impact sports like football have become a topic of great concern in recent years due to studies revealing their link to . premature death. However, abrain injuries incurred by military personnel are a longstanding problem that continues to affect vets long after they return to civilian life. It’s an issue that Denver-based SKYDEX has been working on for years by supplying shock-absorbing equipment to the U.S. military.

The company started 20 years ago, initially developing shock-absorbing material for Nike footwear before entering the combat supply field and developing products for U.S. Navy marine craft and blast mats for other military vehicles. From there, SKYDEX delved into helmets, bulletproof vests and bomb suits. With nearly 414,000 U.S. service members receiving a TBI diagnoses between 2000 and 2019, advancing helmet safety technology is receiving heightened focus.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan highlighted the need for more advanced protective equipment as troops were getting severely injured during vehicle bomb attacks. The U.S. military approached SKYDEX seeking blast mitigation technologies, and early product testing revealed an 80 percent improvement in injury rates. As a result, the government quickly became the company’s foremost customer with thousands of products supplied.

“Head injuries are very complex,” said Alvaro Vaselli, CEO and president of SKYDEX. “We need to continue to do more research and identify how different types of injuries occur and how to best protect against those injuries.”

Vaselli said the changing needs of military personnel and more complex combat technologies have also helped place the spotlight on helmet safety. For example, compared to the relatively simple helmets worn by soldiers in World War II and the Vietnam War, today’s troops need helmets equipped with night vision goggles, radio communication and other electronic devices that change the way helmets are worn and add considerable weight. That has warranted better impact materials, which are evolving alongside the other changes.

“The objective is to get troops to be ready for battle and perform at their best with all that equipment,” Vaselli said. “Weight is a big factor. Stability is very important in addition to protection, so that’s what we take into consideration when we work on different projects.”

He added that heat dissipation and comfort are other considerations that can’t be overlooked, noting, “It doesn’t really matter how protective a helmet is if the users don’t like it and won’t wear it.”

In addition to protection, SKYDEX helmets are geared to be low profile for absorbing more energy within less space, having an open airflow design for comfort, integrating with many helmet designs, and being antimicrobial, odor-free, flexible and durable.

Thermoplastic polyurethane, or TPU, is the basic building block that allows SKYDEX to develop helmet shock absorbers that balance all the factors that are frequently at odds with each other, most notably weight and volume. The key is manipulating the material into specific geometries that reflect the user’s need for impact dissipation, noise absorption, vibration attenuation and other specifications. The process begins with choosing among the hundreds of TPU family materials with varying degrees of hardness and density, then applying a target geometrical pattern to the material.

Although SKYDEX mainly works on custom projects, the work generally doesn’t start from scratch and follows its two decades of being in business. So, whether it’s vehicle blast mats, seats, marine craft decks, helmets, mattresses for barracks or ballistic protection, the company has sufficient institutional knowledge that can be slightly modified to suit users’ needs.

The U.S. military also has its institutional knowledge, and it’s currently being utilized by the Army Research Laboratory, which recently developed a rate-activated tether or RAT webbing system that suspends the helmet on the head.

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