Comparison of design characteristics and customization protocols for swimming goggles

Abstract

Swimming goggles are important tools for swimmers; however, most of the commercialized swimming goggles are designed as one-size-fits-all, which may cause improper fit to a wearer’s facial shape. The present study is intended to review and compare the design characteristics of the existing swimming goggles and the published customization protocols of swimming goggles. The detailed design characteristics of lens, strap, gasket, and nose bridge of 26 commercialized swimming goggles were reviewed, and the dimensions (length, width, and depth) of five swimming goggles are summarized in this paper. Next, the customization protocols of swimming goggles were investigated, which consisted of three major steps: first step involves collecting a wearer’s 2D or 3D facial shape including eye and nasal root areas by using a hand-held scanner, and then using this scanned data to create a 3D contour shape of customized swimming goggles in a computer-aided design (CAD) environment. Second step requires the fabrication of the designed 3D CAD model of the customized swimming goggles by using a 3D printer using transparent and flexible materials. Third step includes conducting validation tests to evaluate the performance of the customized swimming goggles in terms of waterproofness and wearing comfort by comparing with the other existing goggles. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper that reviews the design characteristics of swimming goggles. The review results presented in this paper are particularly useful to develop not only swimming goggles, but also other types of wearable products such as safety goggles, military goggles, and any sort of sports goggles.