Physical and Constitutive Ballistic Skin Models

Non-lethal weapons (NLWs) incapacitate or repel with a low probability of fatality or permanent injury. Because of a global rise in asymmetric warfare, street riots, insurgency and mass demonstrations, use of NLWs has been increasing steadily. Rapid market growth combined with increasing wrongful death litigation has created an intensely competitive research and development effort to commercialize new and improved NLWs. Current NLW research is limited because no synthetic ballistic skin simulant currently exists that is homogeneous, accessible, affordable, easy to handle, has a stable shelf life and exhibits dynamic biomechanical equivalence to human skin. In addition, there is desire for constitutive models that allow accurate and precise prediction of measures of penetration with a reasonable amount of ballistic data. There are very few published computational models of skin penetration and most of these have been focused on knife penetration. While a few computational models exist that focus on the projectile mechanics, significant opportunity remains to incorporate improved predictive value based on the biomechanics of skin. Luna Innovations is developing companion physical and constitutive models of human skin biomechanics.