Appleby-Thomas, Gareth J.Khan, Irfan UllahPainter, JonathanZioupos, PeterLordachescu, AlexandraHes, Roelof A. G.2023-09-132023-09-132023-08-30Appleby-Thomas GJ, Ullah Khan I, Painter J, et al., (2023) Characterisation of human tissues analogues for ballistic testing. In: 56th UK Human Responses to Vibration Conference, 29-30 August 2023, Institute of Naval Medicine, Gosport, UKhttps://www.eventcreate.com/e/hrvhttps://dspace.lib.cranfield.ac.uk/handle/1826/20208Ballistic testing necessarily employs simulant target materials for ethical and fiscal reasons. Current tissue analogues utilised for ballistic testing / research are, however, typically relatively simplistic – such as ballistics soap or gelatin. Consequently, these materials are seldom representative of complex mammalian constructs. In this paper the authors have drawn together core elements of previously published in-house research with the aim of providing insight into potential approaches to create a composite simulant solution. In particular, tissue analogues covering the epidermal, epithelial, connective, muscular and skeletal components are presented. These results highlight the complementary nature of employing a range of tissue simulant materials and, in parallel, the importance – if ballistic testing data is to be truly representative – of fully understanding the nature of the analogues employed.enAttribution-NonCommercial 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/Conference paper