Protective Armor Engineering Design PDF by Magdi El Messiry

Introduction
Protection is necessary for the safety of persons in certain professions where they might be exposed to chemical hazards, sharp tools, needles, knives, explosives, and bullets. Personal protective armor may be classified as industrial, agricultural, military, medical, sports, or space protective armor, according to their specific application. The basic purpose of the armor is to protect the body against the external hazards and, at the same time, maintain safety and comfort.

The design of body armor is a very old art and science; it uses the best materials and technology to provide protection and comfort for the wearer. It should protect against a wide range of ammunition of different calibers, including those used by handguns, rifles, automatics guns, as well as small fragments from explosives. The design of the bulletproof vest allows it to absorb the bullet energy through its penetration resistance and reduces the impact force that is delivered to the body, causing trauma.

Materials used for bulletproof vests started with leather, bronze, and iron and developed into a flexible armor with the use of multilayered textile fabrics from different fibers. Despite the progress of the inventions of the new types of fibers with very high strength and toughness, there is a continuous need for improvement to manage the trend of increasing weapons’ capability by providing high bullet muzzle energy. Therefore, the bulletproof vest should have a low ratio of bulletproof vest weight to penetration resisting force.

Stab-resistant armor design is different from that of bulletproof vests. It is designed against the penetration by sharp tipped objects, such as knives, needles, and other sharp tools. Material used for stab-resistant flexible armor is made of multilayered textile fabrics from different fibers.

The historical review of protective armor, in Chapter 1 of the book, provides valuable information on both the development of the body armors along the timeline of the human history and the development of the ideas and inventions of the protective vest, and why we need more development in the science of materials for armor design. In Chapter 2, analysis of the different textile fibers used for the manufacturing of the body armors assigned for the protection against the various types of threats is provided, such as, for instance, Nylon, Kevlar, Kevlar® 29, Kevlar® 129, Kevlar® Protera, Spectra®, Spectra Shield®, GoldFlex®, Twaron®, Dyneema, and Zylon®.

The book has the following four parts:
Part I gives a brief view of the historical background of the protection armor and its principal designs over human history, indicating the necessity for developing protective armor for different end uses.

Part II discusses the physical, mechanical, and other different textile material properties to be utilized as protective fabrics with the emphasis on the material requiments and design principles for flexible protective armor.

Part III explains the design criteria of stab resistance of flexible protective armor and bulletproof flexible protective armor with the stress on the different construction ideas as well as the theoretical background of the mechanism of failure in each case. The new trends for building modern designs of flexible protective armor are considered.

Part IV explains thoroughly the protective armor testing methods and their different elements, fibers, yarns, fabrics, and gives a comprehensive analysis of the different testing procedures required for the performance of the armor according to the standards.

Several standards for testing the performance of the body armors were developed to ensure compliance with the minimum requirements for body armor protection energy levels. The most popular are NIJ Standard, HOSDB Body Armor Standards for UK Police, and German SK1 Standard. The testing procedures are discussed in Chapter 7.

The current book is concerned with providing the reader with a profound understanding of the basic engineering knowledge of the different types of body armor design and manufacturing and, finally, the method of testing and standards.

The author has done his best to enable the reader to have broad view about the science and technology of body armor design. However, the results of the research cannot be applied to build your own body armor without being tested, certified, and approved by the authorized organization, such as NIJ or other recognized international laboratories.