Contemporary body armor: technical data, injuries, and limits

Abstract

The introduction of firearms in the fifteenth century led to the continuous development of bulletproof personal protection. Due to recent industrial progress and the emergence of a new generation of ballistic fibers in the 1960s, the ability of individual ballistic protections to stop projectiles greatly increased. While protective equipment is able to stop increasingly powerful missiles, deformation during the impact can cause potentially lethal nonpenetrating injuries that are grouped under the generic term of behind armor blunt trauma, and the scope and consequences of these are still unclear. This review first summarizes current technical data for modern bulletproof vests, the materials used in them, and the stopping mechanisms they employ. Then it describes recent research into the specific ballistic injury patterns of soldiers wearing body armor, focusing on behind-armor blunt trauma.

Is behind armour blunt trauma a real threat to users of body armour? A systematic review

“…The PRISMA flow chart is given in Figure 1. Specifically, 21 conference papers,3 11–13 21–35 12 journals articles,2 4 7 8 10 15 17 18 36–39 six reports,9 14 16 40–42 five articles on websites,20 43–46 three PhD theses,47–49 one standard test method6 and two books5 50 were identified. Data obtained were divided into the following topics: injury mechanisms, wounded personnel, killed personnel and female injuries.…”

“…The applied shear stresses may result in tearing of tissue 7 15–17. It is generally accepted that the gross deformation of the chest and the duration and rate at which this deformation occurs affect the injuries observed 7 14 17. However, it is worth noting that the majority of studies reported in the literature that investigate the formation of such stress waves consider hard plates rather than soft armour.…”

Experimental and numerical investigation of fabric impact behavior

“…Kevlar from DuPont, Twaron from Teijin) and ultra high molecular weight polyethylene fibers (e.g. Dyneema from DSM) [1]. In today's practice, fiber compositions are extensively employed in flexible armor applications such as bulletproof vests.…”

Armours for soft bodies: how far can bioinspiration take us?

“…For example, the US military utilizes soft armour vests to cover the majority of the torso with a set of four hard armour plates to cover critical organs on the chest, back, and sides. While it has been noted that vests change the distribution of injuries to unprotected areas [130][131][132], there are still gaps in coverage on the torso that would be vulnerable to high-powered rifles. Similarly, there is often little to no protection on the lower body due to the deleterious effect it would have on mobility.…”