Experimental study on evaluating the damage power of low-kinetic-energy fragile projectiles

Addressing the high probability of injury and fatality associated with traditional anti-riot kinetic energy projectiles represented by rubber bullets, a novel low-kinetic-energy frangible projectile with the characteristics of reliable shell fragmentation and the energy release of powder dispersion was designed based on the existing launch platforms of non-lethal weapons, aimed to improve the application safety of anti-riot kinetic energy projectiles. Through shooting tests on anthropomorphic dummy targets and ballistic gelatin targets, the dynamic impact responses of the two targets under the blunt impacts of frangible projectiles were obtained. In the dummy target tests, the frangible projectile achieved reliable fragmentation and exhibited a significant kinetic energy slow-release effect; the calculated injury assessment indicators for different parts of the dummy were all within the safety threshold. Comparative analyses with the blunt impact test results of rubber bullets show that this type of frangible projectile has significantly higher safety than rubber bullets while maintaining effective pain-inducing performance. In the ballistic gelatin target shooting tests, under the same projectile mass and impact velocity, the peak pressure generated in the gelatin measured by the internal sensor differed by approximately one order of magnitude between the frangible projectile and the rubber bullet. The test results show that the novel low-kinetic-energy frangible projectile can effectively attenuate the peak impact pressure of the projectile and greatly reduce its injury potential through the fragmentation of the projectile shell and the dispersion of the powder filled inside the projectile, which provides technical support for improving the application safety of anti-riot kinetic energy ammunition.