Comparison of less lethal 40 mm sponge projectile and the 37 mm projectile for injury assessment on human thorax

Dept of Weapon Systems & Ballistics, Royal Military Academy, Renaissance 30, 1000 Brussels, Belgium

Abstract

Since there is an increasing interest in avoiding human body injury in diverse situations like crowd control or peacekeeping missions, less lethal ammunition are more and more used. In this study we focus only on kinetic energy non-lethal (KENLW) projectiles. Their desired effects on human body are the temporary incapacitation through blunt trauma. There are different types of KENLW projectiles ranging from rigid to deformable projectiles. Unfortunately, the effects of such projectiles are not really well known as it is difficult to measure the force transmitted to the human body or the related deformation. Because the potential of injury excludes human living tests, tests are performed on cadavers, animals or human tissue surrogates. Besides these tests, numerical simulations are more and more used to gain more understanding, to assess or to predict the effects of this kind of projectile on human body. In this paper a comparison based on the viscous criterion between the 37 mm rigid projectile and the 40 mm sponge projectile was made.