Many army and police personals, and people in the street worldwide have been injured or killed by light weapons in crime and riots.
The good news is tougher soft body armour could be in the making. Researchers, Wan Yunus Wan Ahmad, Mohd Rozi Ahmad, Jamil Salleh, Azemi Samsuri, Mohd Hanafiah Abidin, Mohamad Faizul Yahya, Suzaini Abd Ghani and Ahmad Zafir Romli of the Faculty of Applied Science, found that natural rubber latex (NRL) coated fabrics are suitable to reduce injury, soreness or trauma from bullet shots or hit by hard objects. The NRL coated fabrics seems usable as new material to make soft body armour.
Experiment of the ballistic impact shot on 2 types of fabrics, low thread density and high thread density, showed that the natural rubber latex film increased friction by constraining the yarns within the fabric systems. This increased-friction reduced the indentation depths. It is also able to absorb the impact and transfer it to other areas of the fabric, thus limiting the deflection. In this ballistic test, it showed that a few layers of NRL coated fabrics in the fabric system were able to absorb the impact of a bullet in both fabrics. It also showed that 4 layers of NRL coated fabrics sufficient enough to reduce the blunt trauma.
The NRL coated fabrics is not in the commercial stage yet. What should be done by manufacturers is that use a few layers of NRL coated fabrics, positioned in the last layer in the fabric system. Having a few of these layers may not increase production cost as latex is relatively inexpensive. However, it has to be mentioned that despite having better ballistic impact of the combined neat with NRL coated fabric systems, the inclusion of the natural rubber latex coated fabrics added some weight to the system.
The next experiment will be a comparison study between the natural rubber latex coated fabrics and other soft body armour materials already in the market.
Other than in soft body armour industry, the NRL coated fabric system can also be used in board making as they also enhance panel dimensional stability without affecting the overall flexibility of the panel.
