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Contemporary body armor: technical data, injuries, and limits

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Abstract

The introduction of firearms in the fifteenth century led to the continuous development of bulletproof personal protection. Due to recent industrial progress and the emergence of a new generation of ballistic fibers in the 1960s, the ability of individual ballistic protections to stop projectiles greatly increased. While protective equipment is able to stop increasingly powerful missiles, deformation during the impact can cause potentially lethal nonpenetrating injuries that are grouped under the generic term of behind armor blunt trauma, and the scope and consequences of these are still unclear. This review first summarizes current technical data for modern bulletproof vests, the materials used in them, and the stopping mechanisms they employ. Then it describes recent research into the specific ballistic injury patterns of soldiers wearing body armor, focusing on behind-armor blunt trauma.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. French Armed Forces Institute of Biomedical Research (IRBA), SMCF, BP 73, 91223, Brétigny sur Orge, France

    N. Prat

  2. Department of Orthopaedic and Trauma Surgery, Desgenettes Military Academic Hospital, Lyon, France

    F. Rongieras

  3. Laboratoire de Biomécanique et Mécanique des Chocs, UMR T 9406, IFFSTAR – UCBL1, Lyon, France

    F. Rongieras

  4. Direction Générale de l’Armement, DS/SASF, Bagneux, France

    J.-C. Sarron

  5. Institut de Santé Publique, d’Epidémiologie et de Développement, Université Victor Segalen Bordeaux 2, Bordeaux, France

    A. Miras

  6. UMR T 9406, Faculté de Médecine Lyon-Est, Université de Lyon, Université Claude Bernard Lyon1, 9405, Lyon, France

    E. Voiglio

  7. Department of Emergency Surgery, University Hospital of Lyon, CHLS, Pierre-Bénite, France

    E. Voiglio

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  1. N. Prat
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Correspondence to N. Prat.

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Prat, N., Rongieras, F., Sarron, JC. et al. Contemporary body armor: technical data, injuries, and limits. Eur J Trauma Emerg Surg 38, 95–105 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00068-012-0175-0

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