In the last few decades, ballistic shields have been designed with the intent of stopping the rounds from bullets from a handgun. A lot of ballistic shields started being designed to protect people from these types of weapons which have limitations in their operation due to their small size and low power.
Ballistic shields are mainly designed not to provide protection from bullets coming off hard angles, but they often provide a cone-shaped coverage. This means that there is a chance for most parts of a person's body to be covered which is something many shooters depend on.
When you're designing a shield like this, you're not able to cover every aspect because of the size and directness of incoming rounds. Another thing that has to be considered with these ballistic shields is that the angle at which they receive impact is important. The design of the ballistic shield is to maximize protection by distributing the energy over a larger surface area.
The ballistic shield design consists of 6 pieces, 6 angles, and 6 curved edges. A hard-angled shield can deflect bullets easily, but this comes at the cost of the large surface area that is neglected.
Ballistic guards are designed based on the concept that “contamination” of the barrier materials into the body is better than penetration by a bullet. The intention behind penetrating trauma is to deeply wound or kill an opponent so violently so as to cause their loss of consciousness and/or potential death.
By designing with hard angles, there is little surface contact with any material so there is reducibility on energy transfer to the skin or thoracic wall whereas deflecting a bullet away from a target can minimize damage.
When a projectile strikes a hard angle in a ballistic shield it has less surface contact with the material compared to something that hits the same point at a relatively soft angle. This causes less energy loss and less injury potential.
WHY ARE BULLETS TOO ENERGY-DRIVEN TO CROSS A CONICAL ENVELOPE?
If a bullet is fired with sufficient velocity, it will reach maximum energy by the time it is through the spherical inner boundary of a ballistic shield. When fired at close range the energy of a bullet at rest is less than when fired at longer ranges.
This means that if the shot is fired at an angle the bullet would still hit the target but it would be slower than if it was fired at a 90-degree angle. This means that the ballistic shield would have to be able to absorb a significant amount of energy.
Ballistic shields are designed to absorb and distribute the energy of the bullet. If the shield is designed to protect from a hard angle, then it would be impossible for a bullet to hit a soft angle.
The shot will be fired at a sharp angle, and when it hits the spherical inner boundary of the shield it will stop and change direction to the soft outer boundary. In a standard ballistic shield design, the inner and outer boundaries are made of a soft material. When the bullet hits the inner boundary, it slows down and changes direction to the soft outer boundary.
The outer boundary then catches the bullet and it is deflected back to the barrel causing the bullet to lose most of its energy. The bullet slows down more but the outer boundary does not stop the bullet. It would instead deflect the bullet into another direction.
The problem with the standard ballistic shields is that they are designed to stop the bullet and distribute its energy across the entire surface of the shield. If a bullet has enough energy to go into the soft part of the ballistic shield, it will not be slowed down. The bullet will accelerate and it will continue onto another part of the shield. This means that the only way to stop the bullet is to shoot it with enough power to change the trajectory of the bullet enough to catch it.
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