The destabilizing effect of body armour on military rifle bullets

Abstract

Soft body armour is designed to give protection against fragments and some low velocity bullets but is not designed to stop high velocity rifle bullets. Reports have claimed that soft body armour might disturb the stability of bullets that penetrate it, and that this might increase the size of the lesions. The reason for such an effect might be early yaw of the bullet, so we studied the behaviour of bullets which had passed through soft body armour. A 7.62 × 39 mm AK-47 rifle was fired from a permanent stand using full metal jacketed lead core bullets at a range of 30 m. Soft body armour composed of 14 and 28 layers of aramid fibres (Kevlar) was placed at 90° and 60° to the line of fire. Yaw was measured by the shadowgraph technique and a TERMA Doppler radar. A total of ten shots without body armour, and ten shots with each of the two types of body armour at the two angles were used. The results of the shadowgraph and Doppler radar measurements showed a proportional correlation between the two methods of determining the bullet yaw. The semiquantitative approach of the Doppler radar measurement was in agreement with the more concise measurement using the photographic technique. Velocity loss and loss of spin rate from penetrating 14 or 28 ply Kevlar was negligible. We observed induced instability after penetration of 14 and particularly 28 ply Kevlar, dependence of yaw with respect to the number of layers of Kevlar as well as to the angle of the body armour with respect to the line of fire.