Degradation of military body armor due to wear: Laboratory testing

Abstract

Personal armor, including body armor, is protective clothing designed to either absorb or deflect attacks that would usually be fatal to an individual. These attacks include, but are not limited to, slashing, bludgeoning, stabbing and ballistic threats. In the UK, body armor is worn by police officers for their shift; however, military personnel (particularly when based overseas) may wear body armor continuously for much longer time periods. Thus, the effect of wear due to use on the performance of body armor is of interest. Testing of body armor after actual use is problematic for several reasons including, but not limited to, (i) access to such items and (ii) a lack of knowledge of exactly what the body armor has been exposed to. Thus the use of laboratory testing to understand degradation of body armor is of interest to many agencies. Additionally, laboratory testing allows for the effect of variables to be investigated independently of each other, as well as in combination. The effect of inter-layer wear between apparel items and/or among layers of fabric within apparel does not appear to be systematically explored in the literature. In this paper, the effect of wear on (i) the tensile strength and (ii) the fragment protective performance of fabrics packs containing a para-aramid woven fabric typical of those used to manufacture body armor was investigated.

Ballistic Properties of Hybrid Thermoplastic Composites with Silica Nanoparticles

“…3 * 16 (5) where are: l -the length of the sample, b -the width of the sample, h -the thickness of the sample, F -the force, and A -the deflection [14].…”

“…The 'soft body armor' is usually constructed of the multiple layers of the fabric commonly known as the 'ballistic panel', which is injected into a 'carrier' composed of a polyester/cotton or nylon woven fabric and may be inserted into a light-resistant (or water-resistant) cover. The 'soft body armor' worn by police officers is produced to provide protection from stab threats and hand-gun bullets, while the military body armor is designed to bring protection from fragmentation threats, which are the most frequent injuries in modern war fighting [5]. There has been a significant development of new highperformance armor materials for lightweight http://www.jeffjournal.org Volume 9, Issue 4 -2014 body-armor and lightweight vehicle-armor structures.…”

An integrated approach towards future ballistic neck protection materials selection

“…All ballistic protective materials are susceptible to degradation over time and under certain conditions, 31 although fixed lifetimes for current military body armour systems do not exist. DuPont published the only recommendations in the mid-1980s, 32 stating that para-aramid fibre-based body armour should be replaced every 5 years and this has become the basis of the body armour vest replacement policy for many nations.…”

Development of an automated assessment technology for detecting damage in body armour

“…Although compromised plates have shown that they may be able to resist a threat 2 , the level of protection is very difficult to determine therefore any damage to armour results in its withdrawal from service 3 . Generally, aging is perceived not to be a significant contributing factor to the degradation of hard armour but may effect soft armour 4 .…”