Predicting penetration performance in current and novel sustainable tissue simulants using quasi‐static compression data

Abstract

Historically, ballistic gelatine has been used as the industry standard when conducting experiments associated with survivability, ammunition lethality, and wound ballistics. This biopolymer is used to replicate human tissue and examine permanent and temporary cavitation. However, previous works have highlighted a promise in using foodstuffs gelatine to provide economic benefit to research programmes and reduce the environmental impact caused by a single source supplier. This work compares alternative foodstuffs’ porcine gelatine to vegan alternatives using quasi‐static compression testing to investigate differences in performance, repeatability, manufacturing considerations, and a comparison on transparency when compared to 10% ballistic gelatine. Vegan alternatives were identified as suitable candidates to reduce the ethical and environmental issues associated with traditional gelatine manufacture. It was found that both porcine and vegan alternatives can provide increased performance, transparency, and repeatability at a lower strain rate when using 10% ballistic gelatine as the control. The work reported within this study highlights that at a lower strain rate, researchers can use an alternative material to produce the same results as 10% ballistic gelatine; however, dynamic testing revealed no correlation between datasets, generated as part quasi‐static and dynamic research programmes, can be made, with significant differences in global and local response to impact.