Development of a synthetic bone and tissue model to simulate overmatch military ballistic head injury

Abstract

A synthetic bone and tissue head model was built using sequential experiments and tested against impacts with 7.62 x 39 mm MSC ammunition. The key experiment in this series was a forensic reconstruction of two military head injury gunshot wounds. One of the models produced a good representation of the incident. The other was less accurate but did produce a good representation of tangential gunshot wounds. Further work assessed the model against a contact gunshot injury with 5.56 x 45 mm ammunition and looked at the effects of intermediate glass and transparent thermoplastic targets on the wounds produced by 7.62 x 39 mm impacts. Strengths and weaknesses of the model are discussed and further work suggested.