Optimal skin simulant for ballistic testing.

An extensive literature review, combined with practical experience of forensic testing, has identified several concerns regarding existing studies into skin simulants. These can be summarised as arising due to human skin being a highly complex, multi-layered and anisotropic material whose mechanical properties depend on many factors such as age and gender of the host. In many studies (and papers) essential information is missing.

Space habitats for bioengineering and surgical repair: addressing the requirement for reconstructive and research tissues during deep-space missions.

Numerous technical scenarios have been developed to facilitate a human return to the Moon, and as a testbed for a subsequent mission to Mars. Crews appointed with constructing and establishing planetary bases will require a superior level of physical ability to cope with the operational demands. However, the challenging environments of nearby planets (e.

On differences in the equation-of-state for a selection of seven representative mammalian tissue analogue materials.

Tissue analogues employed for ballistic purposes are often monolithic in nature, e.g. ballistic gelatin and soap, etc.

The shock and spall response of three industrially important hexagonal close-packed metals: magnesium, titanium and zirconium.

Magnesium, titanium and zirconium and their alloys are extensively used in industrial and military applications where they would be subjected to extreme environments of high stress and strain-rate loading. Their hexagonal close-packed (HCP) crystal lattice structures present interesting challenges for optimizing their mechanical response under such loading conditions. In this paper, we review how these materials respond to shock loading via plate-impact experiments.

The high strain-rate behaviour of selected tissue analogues.

The high strain-rate response of four readily available tissue simulants has been investigated via plate-impact experiments. Comparison of the shock response of gelatin, ballistic soap (both sub-dermal tissue simulants), lard (adipose layers) and Sylgard(®) (a potential brain simulant) allowed interrogation of the applicability of such monolithic tissue surrogates in the ballistic regime. The gelatin and lard exhibited classic linear Hugoniot equations-of-state in the US-uP plane; while for the ballistic soap and Sylgard(®) a polymer-like non-linear response was observed.