Those structures requiring essential medical coverage by a plate were demonstrated to be the heart, great vessels, liver and spleen. For the 50th centile male anthropometric model used in this study, the front and rear plates from the Enhanced Combat Body Armour system only provide limited coverage, but do fulfil their original requirement. The plates from the current Mark 4a OSPREY system cover all of the structures identified in this study as requiring coverage except for the abdominal sections of the aorta and inferior vena cava. Further work on sizing of plates is recommended due to its potential to optimise essential medical coverage.
Injury modelling of ballistic threats is a valuable tool for informing policy on personal protective equipment and other injury mitigation methods. Currently, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and Centre for Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI) are focusing on the development of three interlinking numerical models, each of a different fidelity, to answer specific questions on current threats. High-fidelity models simulate the physical events most realistically, and will be used in the future to test the medical effectiveness of personal armour systems. They are however generally computationally intensive, slow running and much of the experimental data to base their algorithms on do not yet exist. Medium fidelity models, such as the personnel vulnerability simulation (PVS), generally use algorithms based on physical or engineering estimations of interaction. This enables a reasonable representation of reality and greatly speeds up runtime allowing full assessments of the entire body area to be undertaken. Low-fidelity models such as the human injury predictor (HIP) tool generally use simplistic algorithms to make injury predictions. Individual scenarios can be run very quickly and hence enable statistical casualty assessments of large groups, where significant uncertainty concerning the threat and affected population exist. HIP is used to simulate the blast and penetrative fragmentation effects of a terrorist detonation of an improvised explosive device within crowds of people in metropolitan environments. This paper describes the collaboration between MoD and CPNI using an example of all three fidelities of injury model and to highlight future areas of research that are required.
Haemorrhage is managed through direct pressure and the application of a tourniquet. It is therefore recommended that the minimum coverage should be the most proximal extent to which a tourniquet can be applied. Superimposition of OSPREY brassards over these identified anatomical structures demonstrates that current coverage provided by the brassards could potentially be reduced.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.