Appleby-Thomas, Gareth J.Wood, D. C.Hameed, AmerPainter, JonathanLe-Seelleur, V.Fitzmaurice, Brianna C.2016-07-062016-07-062016-04-01Appleby-Thomas GJ, Wood DC, Hameed A, et al., Investigation of the high-strain rate (shock and ballistic) response of the elastomeric tissue simulant Perma-Gel®, International Journal of Impact Engineering, Volume 94, August 2016, pp. 74-820734-743Xhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijimpeng.2016.04.003http://dspace.lib.cranfield.ac.uk/handle/1826/10099For both ethical and practical reasons accurate tissue simulant materials are essential for ballistic testing applications. A wide variety of different materials have been previously adopted for such roles, ranging from gelatin to ballistics soap. However, while often well characterised quasi-statically, there is typically a paucity of information on the high strain-rate response of such materials in the literature. Here, building on previous studies by the authors on other tissue analogues, equation-of-state data for the elastomeric epithelial/muscular simulant material Perma-Gel® is presented, along with results from a series of ballistic tests designed to illustrate its impact-related behaviour. Comparison of both hydrodynamic and ballistic behaviour to that of comparable epithelial tissues/analogues (Sylgard® and porcine muscle tissue) has provided an insight into the applicability of both Perma-Gel® and, more generally, monolithic simulants for ballistic testing purposes. Of particular note was an apparent link between the high strain-rate compressibility (evidenced in the Hugoniot relationship in the Us-up plane) and subsequent ballistic response of these materials. Overall, work conducted in this study highlighted the importance of fully characterising tissue analogues – with particular emphasis on the requirement to understand the behaviour of such analogues under impact as part of a system as well as individually.enAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 InternationalPerma-Gel®Tissue SimulantShockBallistic impactEquation-of-stateArticle14206477