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.