Toward a Reference Non-Lethal Projectile to Validate Blunt Trauma Injury Evaluation Models

Kinetic energy non-lethal weapon (KENLW) systems remain one of the most widespread type of non-lethal weapons on the field. NATO has recently published four standardized documents in order to assess the injury potential of such projectiles. The area of interest of this article is the documents standardizing the thoracic and the head non-penetrative impacts (STANREC 4744: AEP 99 and AEP 103). The proposed process is to shoot the projectile on a target and dynamically measure physical parameters, linked to the level of injuries. They give the user the choice of the appropriate target, as soon as the response of the system, impacted by a specific non-lethal projectile, remains in a specified range. So far, this process is performed using a commercially available projectile. This solution has two main drawbacks. On the one hand, the projectiles are rather expensive and expandable. On the other hand, the community has no control over the mechanical properties and behavior of the projectile. If the manufacturer modifies some characteristics of its projectile, the effect on the reproducibility of the test will be dramatic. The objective of this study is to propose an alternate projectile, easy to develop, called “Bullet Simulating Non-Lethal Projectiles” (BSNLP), in which the purpose is to replace the reference projectile in the standard. This projectile must be representative of the projectiles on the market, easy to produce with off-the-shelf components, and fully characterized, in order to allow the user to choose its own way to implement it. This article is focused on 40-mm projectiles. Components, characteristics, and building methodologies are presented. Then, an experimental setup is proposed and results are presented in order to compare them with other KENLW projectiles. Finally, conclusions and way ahead are presented.