Ballistic Wound Evaluation Based on Dye Diffusion Method

Abstract

Ballistic gelatin is widely used as a kind of tissue simulants in wound ballistics. Evaluations of the wound tract of gelatin by projectiles are mainly based on fissures in the gelatin slices. For there are difficulties in building relationships between the areas and the fissures, a new method based on dye diffusion is proposed in this paper. Colored regions in the slices are obtained after penetration of a Chinese 7.62mm rifle bullet into the gelatin block. The colored regions can be divided into ‘X’, ‘I’ and branching ‘I’ shapes. In the second half of the penetration, there is a strong correlation between the areas of the regions and the energy dissipation of the bullet. However, the correlation is poor in the first half of the penetration. Branches of the colored regions mainly distributed at the heads and tails of the permanent cavities. The permanent cavities’ shapes have a great dependence on the nutation angles of the bullets. Orientation angles of the permanent cavities are determined by the precession angles of the bullets.