Injury Risk for the Hand and Forearm Under Loading Representative of Behind Shield Blunt Trauma

Ballistic shields protect users from a variety of threats, including projectiles. Shield back-face deformation (BFD) is the result of the shield absorbing energy from a projectile and deforming towards the user. Back-face deformation can result in localized blunt loading to the upper extremity, where the shield is supported by the user and may cause injury through behind armour blunt trauma (BABT) mechanisms. Post-mortem human subject (PMHS) responses are critical to identify the injury risk in these high-rate scenarios and are used to quantify the injury tolerance. Two vulnerable locations along the upper extremity were investigated—the hand and forearm—using eight PMHS to identify the fracture threshold resulting from shield BABT loading conditions. Impacts delivered to the hand at 16.4 ± 0.8 m/s resulted in failure loads of 3818 ± 897 N, whilst the forearm impacts delivered at a similar velocity of 16.9 ± 1.9 m/s had lower failure loads at 3011 ± 656 N. The corresponding 10% risk of hand and forearm fractures (as measured on a modified WorldSID Anthropomorphic Test Device) were identified as 11.0 kN and 8.1 kN, respectively, which should be used when evaluating future designs of composite ballistic shields. This study is the first known investigation of the upper extremity to this high loading rate scenario and provides the foundation for future biomechanical research in the area of behind shield blunt trauma.