Ar500 steel plate can stop rifle bullets. In my brain I’m thinking like “well if kevlar is stronger than steel, then slab of kevlar of the same size of an ar500 plate should stop rifle bullets too”. Clearly it doesn’t and I don’t understand why
In: Engineering
It’s mostly a combination of speed and bullet design. Faster bullets tend to have a lot more energy because energy is proportional to the velocity squared. Rifle bullets can go 2-3x faster than a handgun, which means 4-10x the amount of energy.
With bullet design, rifle bullets tend to be pointy and long, this is called a spitzer bullet, handgun bullets are more blunt and short and fat. With a long pointy bullet, when it hits the kevlar they put their energy into a smaller area on less fibers, making it more likely the kevlar will fail. You can see it action if you look up 300 blackout, it shoots a spitzer bullet at the same speeds as a handgun, and it can penetrate kevlar vests just because of the long pointy bullet.
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