Read, JamesQuinlan, PhilipBloodworth-Race, SusieHazael, RachaelCritchley, Richard2024-03-152024-03-152024-03-12Read J, Quinlan P, Bloodworth-Race S, et al., (2024) Sustainable and economical alternatives to fragment capture materials in explosive and ballistic trials. Forensic Science, Medicine and Pathology, Available online 12 March 2024https://doi.org/10.1007/s12024-024-00797-5https://dspace.lib.cranfield.ac.uk/handle/1826/21005Strawboard has been utilised as a fragmentation capture material since the 1960s, mainly employed to capture fragments from explosives and explosive devices from arena trials of munitions. As this material has historically been calibrated to a known standard, it has a proven record of allowing research establishments to ascertain the velocity of a fragment based on the depth of penetration of the strawboard. During the time of calibration, strawboard was used as a common building material which was both widely available and relatively affordable; however, due to the recent economic crisis and geopolitical supply issues, this is no longer the case. Building on initial testing, this paper investigates alternatives to strawboard to determine if a cheaper, more readily available material can be used instead. The alternatives are compared and judged based on the NATO ARSP-03 guideline for capture material which includes metrics such as price and attainability, as well as assessing environmental impact and its ability to be used as a viable alternative to strawboard in an explosive environment. Based on these NATO guidelines, explosive fragmentation and ballistic experiments were conducted, and ten materials were tested based on the following criteria: Handling, Density, Flammability, Calibration, Cost and Availability. Medium Density Fibreboard (MDF) was found to be a suitable alternative to strawboard. The data demonstrates that it provides the same capture performance as strawboard at approximately a quarter of the cost and is far more readily available. Other materials also showed potential and further testing should be undertaken to validate these materials as alternatives to MDF.en-UKAttribution 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/StrawboardBlastMDFFragmentationExplosiveArticle1556-2891