USA As Represented by Secretary of the Navy

Peter Matic

William R Pogue, Iii

James P Thomas

Christopher J Kindle

Manfred Kahn

Graham K Hubler

Richard K Everett

Kirth E Simmonds

James A Sprague

Andrew B Geltmacher

Virginia G DeGiorgi

Nevin Rupert

George C Kirby, Iii

Richard Steven Bruno

A testing apparatus to assess ballistic performance of helmet personnel protective equipment having a flat helmet analogue with a helmet shell material in flat panel form and at least one helmet suspension pad; head surrogate components including a skull skin surrogate, a skull bone surrogate, and a brain tissue surrogate; a pressure indicating film adjacent to the head surrogate components; and one or more pressure sensors in the brain tissue surrogate. Also disclosed is the related method for assessing ballistic performance of helmet personnel protective equipment.

Flat panel test hardware and technology for assessing ballistic performance of helmet personnel protective equipment

A testing apparatus to assess ballistic performance of helmet personnel protective equipment having a flat helmet analog with a helmet shell material in flat panel form and at least one helmet suspension pad; head surrogate components including a skull skin surrogate, a skull bone surrogate, and a brain tissue surrogate; a pressure indicating film adjacent to the head surrogate components; and one or more pressure sensors in the brain tissue surrogate. Also disclosed is the related method for assessing ballistic performance of helmet personnel protective equipment.

Body armor for ballistic protection of a user's extremities preferably comprising right and left arm protection units and/or right and left leg protection units. The units include a ballistic protection material which preferably covers most of the user's upper arm, elbow region, lower arm, shoulder, upper leg, knee region, and lower leg except for ventilation zones preferably located on the inner portion of the upper arm and the inner part of the upper leg. The back of the knee is preferably covered by a protective flap.

Extremity armor

A material test specimen design is taught for the determination of critical strain and stress states for multiaxial fracture. The objective of the specimen is to increase the amount of data obtained per specimen while retaining simplicity in testing procedure by using standard tension testing machines to generate the primary deformation of the specimen. The specimen, in conjunction with analytical or computational simulation, uses nonuniform deformation fields produced by secondary and tertiary strain concentrations to generate and track these multiaxial strain states to fracture. Typically, the primary deformation is uniaxial tension of a panel, the secondary strain concentration is a circular hole in the panel and the tertiary strain concentrations are areas of reduced thickness within the deformation field of the circular hole. Multiaxial strain ratios from &minus;0.50 to &minus;0.10 and control over fracture initiation sites may be generated by a test specimen design of the type taught by this invention.

Test specimen design incorporating multiple fracture sites and multiple strain state material fractures

A method for reducing and/or shifting stress in at least one outer end poon of an actuator made from a piezoelectric material. The actuator is affixed to a substrate by an adhesive bond and adapted to cycle between an expanded and contracted positions, which creates stresses in the actuator and in the bond. The method includes the step of doping at least one outer portion of the actuator with a metal oxide to reduce piezoelectric activity therein. In a preferred embodiment, the doped outer portion has a gradient composition varying from the maximum at the end of the actuator to essentially zero concentration at a point inward of the end. The system includes a doped piezoelectric actuator adhesively bonded to a substrate and electrodes attached to the actuator for receiving electrical energy, the actuator containing a metal oxide dopant in the outer portions thereof.

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Alexandria, VA, United States of America

Peter Matic