Body armour design

Understanding ballistic threats is essential in engineering protective and lightweight body armour. The materials for body armour design should meet a number of requirements ... 

Optimisation of body armour design parameters vulnerability and survivability assessment... 

Although there are numerous approaches for performance improvement, one thing is certain body amour will become lighter, stronger, more durable, and more comfortable. In addition, body armour is expected to be multifunctional. For instance, the All-Purpose Enviromnental Clothing System (APECS) used by US Marines is able swiftly to respond to the ambient environment and adjust the temperature for its wearers. Another imperative trend for body armour is that the design is required to... 

Key issues in body armour threats, materials and design... 

Troops said the armour, known as the Modular Combat Body Armour System (MCBAS) is so heavy and inflexible that at times they could not even adopt the correct firing position to use their weapons. Originally designed for use in Iraq where the majority of operations were mounted, it is now being adapted to better deal with the dismounted operations increasingly being conducted in Afghanistan... 

A ballistic panel can be made from a single ballistic material or from two or more materials in combination. Where more than one ballistic fibre is used, the vest is often referred to as a hybrid . The location and number of layers of each material within the multiple-layer protective panel ate critical to the overall performance of the panel. If a manufacturer uses insufficient ballistic material, the body armour will offer insufficient protection. It is thus indispensable that sufficient material and a suitable margin of safety be incorporated into well-designed, properly manufactured body armour (McConnell, 2006). 

Considering firing test number 6 with the highest value of impact velocity of 362 m/s, the material response of the body armom implies 7.5 perforated layers of fabric, with the same hole diameter and depth values, instead of only fom layers as for firing test number 3. The difference of velocity between these two tests (numbers 3 and 6) is equal to 10 m/s, but the amoimt of kinetic energy produced is the square of this difference. This reveals that the body armom resistance is close to the limit value of perforation and helps us to optimize the number of layers in this zone of the body armour at the design phase. 

In order to better protect and fit the body armour vest on a female form, a new 3D design technique has been used. This darts rotation technique helps reduce the number of protective para-aramid fabric layers required for the vest and allows a... 

Davis, E. G. and Neades, D. N. (2002) Novel Application of Trauma Severity Scoring in the Design, Development, and Evaluation of US Body Armour against Ballistic Threats , Proceedings of Personal Armour Systems Symposium 2002 (PASS2002), Atlantic Hotel, The Hague, The Netherlands, 18-22 November 2002, pp. 33-41. 

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