Abstract
The protection of soldiers and law enforcement personnel form ballistic threats is a growing concern with the increase of armor piercing small caliber projectiles. In this thesis, a design will be proposed for a new ballistic plate insert for wearable personal ballistic protection. In the area of wearable personal ballistic protection, there exist several design parameters. Wearable armor should be light as to not tire the wearer, maneuverable to allow for natural movements by the wearer, and most importantly, have the ability to stop impacts by a broad range of projectiles, perhaps even stop multiple impacts from these same projectiles. Currently, ballistic vests utilize inserted plates placed over vital areas of the body. These plates consist of various steels and/or ceramics to prevent the projectile from penetrating the vest and to redistribute the blunt force of impact over a larger area leading to less severe damage to the tissue underneath the impact area. Plates are used to keep the vest fairly unrestrictive for the wearer in comparison to full-plate armor. Smaller more numerous plates have advantages over larger plates in user maneuverability but lack suitable protection at the plate spacing. Often, vests are constructed to have multiple vest inserts most often covering the front, back, and either side of the torso. The 30-35 lbs of the currently fielded Interceptor Armor and restrictive nature of the vest has soldiers deciding not to wear the vest properly. The weight leads to poor body mechanics, increased fatigue, and decreased soldier mobility. To decrease weight, coverage can also be poor. A functionally graded material in the form of a ceramic plate might decrease the weight of the ballistics vest. The energy absorption for each part of the human-vest-projectile system is analyzed to aid in the design of the new FGM plates. It was found that titanium diboride (TiB2) mixed with titanium (Ti) by percent weight had increased energy dispersion capability. A plate consisting of pure TiB2, followed by TiB2 (20 wt.% Ti), over Ti10V2Fe3Al or straight Ti may lower incapacitation rates from impacts. It was also found that fragmentation of the projectile is a significant portion of the energy lost in this system. It would be advantageous to design plates to take advantage of this relation.