Armor Testing: Blunt Force Trauma

thank you for tuning into an episode of in-range I'm doing an interesting really awesome collaboration here I got Matt llanfair from primary and secondary and Gary from survival armor and Gary you provided us a lot of really awesome donations today to do a test that you don't normally see on the Internet we're not just testing armor is in deflecting actual projectiles but what we're gonna test is the really what the blunt to force trauma that's delivered to the person who receives that blow even if that round doesn't penetrate the armor yeah so can you tell me what we're doing here and how we're doing this so the word weighting proper scientific results yeah well what we're gonna do is we've got the Roma plastilina number one clay which is the exact same test medium that the NIJ uses in the laboratory when they're actually certifying the armor now our clay is not what they took what they deem calibrated okay it's not at the appropriate temperature has been dropped tested all that but it'll give us good relative results for today and it's not exactly cold clay it's been warm all day so it's it's fairly warm but it's safe to say it's not calibrated but that's okay for a field test you know such as I'm doing here absolutely so that this kind of came up between Matt and I a little while back we were talking about how much damage is imparted to the body when you take a hit on a rifle play mm-hmm and a lot of people seem to think there's some kind of magical waves that come in and crush your chest cavity and you die anyway sure you know depending on the caliber so you know something like that could be true we talked about it early or some of the medical studies I was able to dig up are out of the UK from northern island and they got shot with 14.5 which is insane to think about yeah I mean it's just it's really not applicable to United States law enforcement more people in the US would be wearing rifle plates period right so what I thought would be interesting is to come out while we've got you guys here film it try a couple things we could try just a plate on there with no other backer so you can see what kind of blunt-force trama being transmitted if you're wearing just rifle plates and then try the same thing with a soft armor backer which is going to further reduce that amount of blunt-force trauma if we're talking about civilian law enforcement in the u.s. that's really how it should be worn there should be soft armor like a cushion yeah behind the plates because this is going to give your handgun protection and then say in an active shooter situation you're probably gonna get a plate over that they're certainly not gonna strip off soft armor mm-hmm to go to that so I figured we could do a hit just standalone rifle plate then another hit with soft armor behind it and kind of compare the differences in the two and in fact we've got two different kinds of plates we have one of our new survival armor they are 1,000 steel plates traditionally I haven't been a huge fan of steel rifle plates because of spalling mm-hmm this is a small lined plate but the spall liners effective for about two or three shots it does a pretty good job after that it starts to really starts falling a lot but they've gotten quite a bit better with the coatings you know for small protection and AR 1000 is kind of cool in that it also gives you m193 protection AR 500 historically has not yep so and I've you actually even shot that plate with m855a1 and had some pretty good results with it too okay so that's a standalone steel plate it's a three plus plus plate which really says that it stops m855 ball okay and then I have something new here this is a ceramic poly hybrid plate that we came up with called the lightweight and you can feel it's actually pretty lightweight yeah in the patrol plate sizes it comes in around a pound to a pound and a half okay so it's really meant to be a full-time wear thing for patrol officers not in emergency you throw your plates in this is meant to be worn full-time on the person so instead of wearing just soft armor or wearing like a go to war full-on rifle plate system you augment your current system with this and you get some rifle protection on top of your self absolutely okay so and that is also standalone rated so we can shoot that both ways as well but really the way I envision people using that is in conjunction with soft armor yeah but we can shoot both of them m80 ball 762 nato is kind of the certification cartridge and for the purpose of this test that's also the cartridge that you'll see the most dramatic back face signatures the dance in the clay so I figure that's a good cartridge to use for that test which is what we have here we've got MagTek m80 ball and we're going to be using an XC our rifle which and we're gonna be shooting this at 50 feet of TV which is the proper distance for this type of test yeah and an interesting sidenote it's also if you look at the FBI statistics it is where officers get shot with rifles the officers in the United States if they're going to be killed with a rifle there were none recorded that I could find that we're closer than 50 feet so yeah so that's actually and and the two cartridges incidentally are 223 five five six and seven sixty by thirty nine those are the two most likely cartridges to be used so the seven six two m80 cartridge is kind of there and everything below that and generally speaking people consider those to be lesser threats this is a real outlier in types of normal situations in which law of course when officers were engaged to the right sort of a worst-case scenario almost yeah I get that with the air 1,000 versus 500 now I understand a lot of people have had concerns with air 500 not being a steel for to be actually armored that people designed it basically to be a target but not to be worn direct what's the difference between that and this AR 1000 this air 1000 in particular is a Swedish meal ballistically milled steel it's made specifically for this application it's not made for front end loaders or you know my god so it gets lot tested it is purpose-built for this application so we've had some I've actually been pretty impressed with it from coming from a guy who doesn't really like steel rifle plates yeah I've been pretty happy with this so instead of taking something that's normally a target and applying it as armor the Swedes actually went ago went about making a steel plate into Armour specific that's right okay very interesting and with this this is reusable I see that you have some tools too yep so what we'll do is we'll we'll be able to see a dent in that clay from the impact will kind of scrape it level I got a set of calipers here we'll have to convert it to millimeters the NIJ standard for back-pay signatures the dentin that clay on calibrated clay granite will probably see shower dents because it's not as warm as it should be yes but the standard is 44 millimeters now interestingly that's another thing you and I talked about the military is actually increasing that civilian law enforcement is kind of staying at 44 military's going for their testing 258 which tells me that they're really not seeing the type of blunt-force injuries from impacts on these plates that warrant even the 44 millimeters yes so it'll be kind of interesting to see so there's a situation there and where maybe you could actually reduce the way to your armor because you're not so much worried about that's why they look more Strama that's reducing the load on the soldier that's exactly why they're gonna make sense alright so we're here at 50 feet we've got one round of m80 ball and we've got the AR 1000 in a plate carrier there in front of that medium so let's go ahead and fire one shot and see what we get we are clear let's go see what the results are all right so we have our first hit on the target let's go ahead and take this apart and see we got yeah let's take a look so you can see you can see definitely where that impact point was this is smoking and yeah it's smoking and you can actually see to this fall most of it came out the front mm-hmm so this is important to note on steel plate you can see there's very little or little vertical dispersion up through here they don't see anything yeah so most of us falling went out in the front and that's what I've seen typically with this fall liner in two or three hits you're gonna get pretty good vertical protection against fall after that you're gonna start seeing spall come out through the true that the fear of course is taking it up into your throat correct folks really two or three hits on a rifle plate I mean that's if you're taking that many it's already such a bad day that we're having a different problem right so you can see try to displace this ball really didn't affect the vertical part of it not right here mm-hm so we'll unsnap this here and we'll take lift this away you can see it was stopped on the plate we had a fairly flat surface here and I see really really no discernible see anything about that bass signature on steel so let's take so there's your plate yeah you can see the impact point tiny I mean it's there there's a visible dent or a back face deformation pattern right but it is a it's quite minor actually yeah and inside this carrier which was also a little bit padded look like a you know plate carrier would be I I don't think we'd even be able to get a measurable back face signature off of that so really you're taking the energy of the bullet you're kind of destroying the mass of the projectile and you're spreading that impact energy not just over a very small surface area you're spreading it over the surface area of the whole plate yeah essentially so that means you know pick your number in terms of foot-pounds of energy whatever cartridge you've used you're not just focusing it on a fingertip you're focusing on something that's 10 by 12 and you can see the result on the clay is there's not really a whole lot of blunt force trauma you know associated with something like this so we can postulate from this effect that while the person would probably be pretty concerned that something bad just happened oh yes they're probably not having a broken sternum or a dislodged a older or something like right I find it very unlikely particularly with the steel plates mm-hmm you're gonna see a lot less in terms of blunt-force trauma injuries to the body okay so is that to say if we go to that ceramic plate we might see more I think you will okay well that's is that the next part of our tab let's do it with software well I I guess we don't even really need to do that with software because we already had a null effect yeah the soft armor would only displace it more so I think now we should go to the ceramic let's do a ceramic and see what does Bayer and then let's put also got to point out that's an awesome shot okay no we'll set this aside I'll reload it with the ceramic we'll shoot it bare and then we can do it again with soft armor because I think you will see some back face when we're back at 50 feet one more round of m80 ball this time we've got the ceramic plate with no Kevlar backing let's see what we get all right we just put around on the ceramic plate with no Kevlar backing at 50 feet yep let's take a look let's take a look and see where it hit sure been towards the bottom edge of the plate over here which is what I think we were shooting for hopefully look at the clay oh my yeah you can see a definite back face signature it did stop the projectile and it's gonna be here inside this plate whoa here's the plate oh wow look at that so as I told you this is a ceramic and polyethylene hybrid plate so you can see a little bit of separation there at the bottom that's our comm you know rifle plates can't take infinite hit this wasn't that much of an edge hit honestly either I thought I edged it but that's not real out it's not should have not terrible though so from here I mean yeah Wow you can see that bulge on the back of the plate that would be energy transfer to your body if you were wearing their plates yes so you are gonna see some blunt force trauma from that let's see what it measures out at that is a stark difference from that error 1,000 steel plate it is so what we'll do is let's kind of scrape this level just like that because it will kind of bunch that clay up you're gonna kind of scrape that like a craters eye getting hit by a meteor yeah we've got a crater now so what we also have to do is subtract the thickness of whatever I'm measuring from to get the bottom edge of it so we'll just zero the caliper out on that on that so about right there okay and now we'll lay this flat and put this across the face of it and then measure the deepest part of that indentation with caliper make sense and we'll have to have somebody convert this to millimeters okay this is America so we'll just run this down into the bottom of that debt until it touches just like that okay now we have point eight one zero Wow so if we convert that into millimeters somebody got a phone we can convert that audience there we go what is it twenty and a half so twenty and a half millimeters so so how the nij allowable is 44 millimeters hmm so that's about half of what's allowable of course like I said this clays a little cold so we would have got a little more but it wouldn't have been doubled it would not have been above 44 mm so let's take it listen let's go let's jump up to 30 we're still well below 4 still well below yeah that's still on that mindset what saying that when I look at that that does not look good that seems like a very painful event when we have recreated officer shootings in the laboratory hmm with soft armor particularly with 44 Magnum because you get the same kind of effect you see these dramatic back face signatures in the clay yes when we've taken actual situations that have happened on vest sizes because the size of the vest actually does matter when you're shooting it for backfill displacing the energy more surface exactly it's like punching with an eel versus a fist so we've had shootings where in the laboratory when we've replicated them same distance same caliber same vest that were over 60 millimeters so the United allowable is 44 the officers that sustained those 60 millimeter back face signatures were able to return fire kill the person that was attacking them and suffered no long-term ill effect just like what bruising or what really interesting fascinating okay yeah so while that looks kind of like a lot when you think about it I mean think about how much your chest will compress during CPR yeah you know or something along that line the famous line and body armor is the dynamic elastic human torso that's what people call it so that's actually not that much an inch enough the 44 millimeters is not something they arrived at out of anything other than it's an arbitrary number it's a number that they decided because this wasn't meant to be a tissue simulant it was made to be consistent repeatable and a scientific control and so when they arrived at the 44 millimeters that was just a standardized number for testing but it has proven out through the years that that's a that's actually a pretty good number I mean we just don't see these kinds of injuries on people who get shot where blunt force trauma is causing any long-term serious harm so that's actually you know that's actually pretty good and now I think we should try it again with soft armor you Heidi what that looks like so it's interesting it's like the BMI of blunt-force trama it's like well that seems about right and it seems like it actually wasn't that bad no it was actually pretty good gasps but there's a little room for error there which maybe we could decrease the weight and maybe make it a little bit less concerned well like I said the military's kind of switching to 58 No yeah all right that should tell you that we're not seeing the kinds of yeah injuries that people are supposing you would receive from that impact because it does look dramatic but the reality of it is it's it's really I mean you're gonna know it you know you're gonna probably have some bruising you could potentially have some broken ribs or something and you always have that potential for you know a pneumothorax or something along those lines but as far as long-term debilitating injuries or even injuries that take you out of the gunfight they just you just don't see them Wow all right let's go to the Kevlar back and see what happens we just try to get it somewhat back to level for these purposes I'd have it totally level if it was in the lab my big pizza cutter then I just usually find the lowest spot and kind of push that back in so pretty clean soft armor right next so now the top half of this plate which I'll expose this time so you can see it a little better you see that okay all right we're back at 50 feet one more round of m80 ball this time we have a ceramic plate backed by some soft armor let's see if we change the impact in regards to blunt force trauma you alright we got a clean impact hopefully in a little bit different spot let's take a look at what changed with that soft back yet so we have an impact right here yep so let's peel this back and we'll take a look and see so you can see there was no penetration through into the soft armor was not and take a look at what a significant difference and that's a significant difference even after this plate had already been struck once before right so take a look at the plate now see that was your first impact that's your second impact it is the plate did its job um it did it by itself and with the soft armor you can see it's starting to delaminate the significant you know amount on the back there so you're not gonna get a great deal more hits on this plate but it did its job and I don't know that we have a discernible I don't see anything that's clearly visible enough to measure at all I don't know that we have really a measurable back face signature there so the soft armor behind it which is really how American you know law enforcement are gonna wear this product mmm you see you're getting pretty good protection against the powers trauma so that is a huge difference you know can you think of so many people you just get a rifle plate put it on don't worry about any kind of backing like soft armor and well reduces weight reduces heat but in regards to now with seeing the difference in terms of the blunt-force trama delivered to you in the case of an impact it's I think you want that as well it is how really the product should be used mm-hmm and I think it's a pretty good graphical representation that a lot of times when these guys think oh you're gonna go flying back or there's some kind of energy transfer you know it's almost like a movie myth you fly through the window and land five feet behind this box weighs roughly seventy pounds so seventy pound box didn't hardly move at all no one will see that on the footage - yeah it didn't hardly move at all you're pretty much destroying the mass of the bullet you are having a lot of impact energy they're still you're not getting that penetrating trauma and realistically totally survivable and not only survivable but you're probably still going to be in the fight that's nuts that's really interesting that is a really interesting demonstration of something that's like serious science and physics right there isn't it well I think that's all we can do with this we've proven the point there that the Kevlar bag use me soft armor backer in front of this ceramic plate is a huge difference in terms of the type of energy that's deployed into your body in case of an impact yeah also interesting to see the steel without a back or did a really good job as well effect just as good so it's a weird thing armors like this give and take just like everything in life just like everything you know steel has pros and cons um you've got spalling you've got potential for ricochets you have all of those things wait wait you also though we're gonna get much many more hits on a steel plate than you will on a ceramic plate Wow or even on a poly plate so you know you're gonna you're gonna be ceramic though I mean this is for lightweight for ease of wear for everyday wear if you want to wear it full-time all the time that's your job and you need that personal protection that's that's a pretty tough plate to beat and pretty good product I mean I could see you know it's just like anything else the gun that's too big and bulky that's awesome that you leave at home the armor that's too big and bulky or heavy if you leave at home or you may and that's not a good thing on that bad day but I hope that'll answer some of the questions you know that I know you and I have both been seeing oh yeah as far as this because it's just not a demonstration that I really see too often I never have so first so I want to say here is I want to thank you Matt for putting this together to have these types of people here to do this kind of content oh my pleasure that's an incredible thing to collaborate with your channel yeah and I want to thank you Gary for bringing out all the proper materials to do this testing but also actually sacrifice some serious actual real product here in the process of doing it so thank you cuz that's educational to everybody not just an audience that's just curious but people actually need to live and depend on this stuff to save their lives absolutely that's we love to do and I also want to thank my patrons because it's because of them but I could be here at all to do this so guys if you are a patreon thank you if you're not please consider it although Gary did provide this all free of charge but just being here is because of you if you can't please consider it if you can't I understand to subscribe to the channel for this kind of really interesting information and share with your friends thank you very much you

Channel: InRangeTV

Views: 82,911

Rating: 4.9549856 out of 5

Keywords: blunt force, body armor, ar500, survival armor, ceramic, kevlar, soft armor, back face deformation, trauma, inrange, inrangetv, primary & secondary, P&S, xcr, xcr-m, robinson arms

Id: RVpo4MwZoHM

Length: 21min 58sec (1318 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 01 2019