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
Steel is much more dense then kevlar. The steel plate used in armour is much heavier then the kevlar plate carrier it is mounted in. You can get thin ar500 steel armour but they are not going to be able to protect against the same rounds.
In addition to this kevlar and hardened steel are very different materials with different properties. Kevlar is very strong, but it will easily bend and you can even cut it with some effort. A bullet hitting kevlar might not punch through the kevlar at once but push the kevlar into the body behind it creating a huge wound. The forces concentrated in that spot may eventually cut the kevlar as well. Ar500 is very hard, a slightly different property. Unlike kevlar it will not deform and therefore are able to distribute the force of incoming projectiles over a larger area. Basically it is impossible to push the entire plate into the body behind it.
However Ar500 is brittle. When a projectile hits it then it might cause steel spalling on the back to shoot out at lethal speeds. This is why an armour plate need the kevlar plate carrier, to contain the spalling. Either one is lethal to get shot with.
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