The conception of ballistic personal protective equipment requires a comprehensive understanding of the human body’s response to dynamic loads. The objective of this study is to develop rib bone surrogates enhancing new anthropomorphic test devices for personal protective equipment evaluation at high dynamic impacts. These are fabricated with additive manufacturing and compared to post-mortem human subjects (PMHS) data from literature. The 5th rib of the finite element Global Human Body Model Consortium (GHBMC) male 50th percentile (M50) model was extracted and transferred to a CAD model. This CAD model was divided into 30 sections with specific cortical bone thicknesses in all directions (caudal, cranial, cutaneous and pleural) from an equivalent rib of an M50 PMHS. Three different additive manufacturing technologies (direct metal laser melting, fused filament fabrication and multi jet modeling) were used to reproduce the M50 PMHS 5th rib surrogate. A total of 57 specimens were dynamically (500 mm/s) loaded to failure in a bending scenario imitating a frontal thoracic impact. Force, displacement, stiffness, and energy at failure were determined. Also, the strain distribution using 3D digital image correlation was recorded and compared to PMHS data from literature. The rib surrogates show deviations from the PMHS characteristic values. Nevertheless, there are also common characteristics in key variables to certain age groups of the PMHS data, which will facilitate the further development and improvement of adequate surrogates for a more realistic representation of the human body’s response to high dynamic loads.

Conducted electrical weapons (CEWs) have been used by law enforcement agencies worldwide to control and restrain potentially violent persons. As new generations of these weapons are developed, effectiveness and safety need to be evaluated. The new TASER 10 uses an independently targeted probe scheme with floating polarities so that any two probes can form a connection. This is in contrast to older generation weapons, which used paired probes with fixed take-off angles. The expectation is with up to a maximum of 10 shots and independent targeting; the weapon will have a greater effectiveness. In this pilot study, we used our previously published, standardized methodology for measurement of CEW effectiveness on motivated human volunteers for several objectives: (1) to directly compare the effectiveness of the waveform on human subjects to an older generation weapon (the TASER 7), (2) to more broadly compare it to historical controls, and (3) to look at various probe configurations to determine their comparative effectiveness. The task at hand was to reach a suspended martial arts dummy 12 ft (3.65 m) away while being exposed (under power) to the electrical waveform of the TASER devices in various dart configurations. Several intervention groups were examined. We used video review with our standard methodology to rate goal achievement and limb capture. The results demonstrate that the TASER 10 has similar ability to induce neuromuscular incapacitation as the TASER 7. Additionally, the ability of the TASER 10 to place multiple darts on a specific target area to create the desired probe spread is a technological advantage over previous models. This, together with the floating polarity probes, promise to make the TASER 10 potentially more effective and flexible in the field.

To effectively assess the injury risk of the blunt impact of the SIR-X sponge grenade on the human thorax, in this paper, we used a numerical simulation technique to test the non-lethal kinetic energy projectiles that blunt impact on the Hybrid III 50th dummy model. By simulating the effect of the L5 projectile on the thorax of the Hybrid III 50th dummy model, about NATO standard AEP-99 (2021 edition), the thoracic displacement curves of the dummy model in three testing conditions were obtained in the validation corridors. The idea of replacing the finite element model of the human body with the Hybrid III 50th dummy finite element model was proposed. We considered the difficulty in obtaining data due to the large deformation of the contact position when the SIR-X sponge grenade impacts the dummy’s thorax. We proposed a mathematical model to predict the impact injury of the human thorax using the rib displacement measured by the rib displacement sensor of the Hybrid III 50th dummy. We simulated the SIR-X sponge grenade blunt impacting the dummy model’s thorax. The measured rib displacement was used to predict and analyze the injury risk of the human thorax, providing a specific data reference for practical application.