MECHANICS OF 'SMART' TEXTILES EMBEDDED IN HEAD PROTECTION HELMET TO PREDICT BRAIN INJURIES

PhD POSITION OFFER – 36 MONTHS (Q4 2025 – Q3 2028)

Concept Development and validation of a 'Smart' Textile Embedded in a Head Protection Helmet Coupled with a Digital Twin: Prediction of Real-Time Cranio-Cerebral Injuries to improve Emergency Response

Host institution

The Laboratory of Applied Biomechanics (LBA) is a joint research unit of the University Gustave Eiffel and Aix-Marseille University, located within the Faculty of Medicine on the North Hospital-University Campus in Marseille. Its research program is based on the biomechanical modelling and simulation of the human body (Virtual Human) for health, sports, and safety applications. The laboratory's objectives include understanding trauma mechanisms to improve prevention and treatment of resulting injuries, and enhancing medical devices and associated surgical techniques.

Two-wheelers head protection context

Two-wheelers accidents represent a major societal issue. In metropolitan France only, despite accounting for less than 2% of traffic, motorized two-wheelers accounted for nearly 25% of road deaths and 33% of serious road injuries in 2022. Beside, accidents involving bicycles and electric scooters increased by nearly 50% between 2019 and 2022. Furthermore, craniocerebral trauma is considered as the leading cause of death for motorcyclists and cyclists (Who, 2007). Finally, most of current research focuses on secondary safety but tertiary safety is recognized as a primary means of saving lives.  

Scientific context

This PhD research is part of the 3 year Excellence Chair program “Innovative Materials for Human Body Applications” funded by the A*Midex foundation and initiated in January 2025 (https://www.univ-amu.fr/fr/public/actualites/decouvrez-les-nouveaux-laureats-des-appels-projets-amidex-decembre-2024). 5 full time equivalent researchers are planned to be recruited. More specifically, this PhD concerns the work packages dealing with the integration of ”smart” textiles in head protection helmets to predict cranio-cerebral injuries in real time.

Objective

The goal of this PhD is  to establish the proof-of-concept of a technological brick enabling, in an event of impact, the real time prediction of a helmet wearer skull& brain injuries based on embedded “smart” textiles output.

Main phases and deliverables (provisional timeline)

The PhD student will benefit from the expertise and resources of the LBA's numerical and experimental platforms. Synergies for characterization and modelling will be set up with the LBA team working on understanding and preventing craniocerebral trauma in skiing/snowboarding/electric scooters (N. Bailly, P. J. Arnoux). Additionnal support could be offered by AI researchers who recently joined the LBA.

• WP1: “Smart” textile mechanical calibration : Set up the transfer function between the physical signals generated by “smart” textiles and their mechanical states in the context of head protection helmet impact, Oct 2025 – Dec 2026


• WP2: Head impact conditions reconstruction : To replicate by inverse method the head impact conditions based on the “smart” textile mechanical states worked out in WP1, July 2026 – Dec 2027


• WP3: Skull and brain injury prediction in real time : To predict the risk of craniocerebral injury in the event of impact based on the signal analysis of “smart” textiles embedded in a head protection helmet, July 2027 – Sep 2028


• Deliverables : 2 articles published, 1 submitted

For more information, please access to https://lba.univ-gustave-eiffel.fr/recrutement

Collaborations

This PhD thesis is a multi-disciplinary research project. Coordination and transfers will be established with I-Safe Virtual Human partners. Furthermore, partnerships will be sought with helmet manufacturers for motorcyclists (SHARK-Marseille, SHOEI-Japan, ...), and cyclists (DECATHLON, …),  textile manufacturers (FEG Textiltechnik, Textinov, …) and academic laboratories (LPMT/Haute Alsace University, CIS/Mines Saint-Etienne).

How to apply

Frédéric Turquier (Full Professor, Aix-Marseille University), E-mail: frederic.turquier@univ-amu.fr

Nicolas Bailly (Researcher, Gustave Eiffel University), E-mail: nicolas.bailly@univ-eiffel.fr

Website: https://lba.univ-gustave-eiffel.fr/