Enhancement of a skin penetration surrogate for non-lethal kinetic impacts

This article focuses on the risk assessment of non-lethal kinetic projectiles. These projectiles are supposed to incapacitate/stop/degrade personal with a low probability of permanent injury or fatality and should not cause internal injuries or skin penetration. This latter effect can be evaluated with a specific surrogate composed of natural chamois, foam and ballistic gelatin. One possible improvement of the surrogate is to replace the natural chamois by a more reproducible material. Two different solutions are proposed and then evaluated. Test results are presented and are compared to reference ones. At last, a practical conclusion explains if one of the new materials should be used instead of the original natural chamois.