Ascertaining Bio-Mechanical Response of Armor Materials

This proposal describes a project to develop an integrated system to measure the energy and impulse transferred through a piece of body armor material subjected to ballistic and non-ballistic loads. The proposed system is independent of the target and body armor material and can be applied to any combination of materials deemed relevant in the future. As part of this effort, a signal conditioning and data acquisition system will be developed that will report pressure, impulse, displacement, and energy transferred to the target as a function of both time and location. In Phase I, a system will be designed, physically modeled, and tested to demonstrate the operation of the system under dynamic loading. The initial use for this system will be to test body armor systems and, using a biomechanical model currently under development, predict the injuries likely to be sustained by the wearer under a variety of attack scenarios. The final system will be commercialized for application to protective garment testing of all kinds including bulletproof vests and sports equipment, testing the response of the human body to impacts for safety and forensic projects, and characterizing the response of malleable materials to static or dynamic loads.