Development of low cost composite plates for humanitarian demining operations

Composite plates using flax fabrics and maleic anhydride modified polypropylene were fabricated on laboratory scale. The aim of the current research was to develop a low cost composite plate or u hybrid structure based on those plates and steel sheet, for making humanitarian demining clothes protecting against secondary fragmentation caused by anti-personnel blast mines. Ballistic impact tests according to STANAG 2920 were carried out for determining the v₅₀-limit. So called field tests were performed by means of simulated anti-personnel mines using M112 explosive; the repeatability and the spatial distribution of the projected fragments were checked before fixing the final experimental setup. The performance of the bare composite plate was compared with the hybrid structures in terms of v₅₀ and in terms of damage mechanisms. All tested configurations performed amazingly well during the field tests, which was not the case for the ballistic impact tests. This led to the conclusion that v₅₀ might not be the best criterion to characterize protective clothing. This conclusion is sustained by energetic considerations and by field tests on plates with half the thickness of the initial plates.