Assessment of skin penetration of kinetic non-lethal projectiles using the surrogate method

Kinetic non-lethal weapons (KNLW) are explicitly designed and developed to incapacitate people with a low probability of fatality or permanent injury. More specifically, KNLW are designed to avoid penetration of the human skin. However, incidents causing permanent injuries are a practical reason why evaluation of skin penetration injury by non-lethal projectiles is necessary and relevant. A promising method to evaluate whether a projectile penetrates the skin is the surrogate method. This method uses a tissue simulant model for the skin and was developed using experiments conducted on post-mortem human subjects (PMHS). The model consists of ballistic gelatine covered with closed-cell foam and chamois leather. In this work, commercial and experimental projectiles have been evaluated using this method. The evaluation involves: gathering data of the lethality of non-lethal projectiles, such as the v50 and the minimum safe impact speed. In addition, the surrogate method itself is evaluated.