Ballistic/Penetration Resistance and Energy Absorption in Fiber-Reinforced Composites: Design, Performance, and Future Trends in Helmets and Body Armor

In impact engineering domain, it is always critical to evaluate impact events with respect to event location, impactor velocity, and inclination of impactor along with other factors. Such impacts become critical when they are related to safety gadgets of law enforcing agencies and two-wheelers. Law enforcing agencies personals and two-wheel bikers, failure to wear ballistic armor or safety helmets during an accident can cause a direct head injury which leads to life threatening conditions. In addition to this, body armor unavailability possesses a potential life risk in case of hypercritical events. In this review, extensive studies have been carried out from experimental to computational research available in the field of ballistics. Multiple study matrices are developed to compare material systems, different test protocols, and reported outcomes across literature. This review includes different materials utilized in ballistic protections, their manufacturing, experimental characterizations to absorb shock phenomenon, and different finite element methods used till date to computationally evaluate different impact scenarios. The main emphasis in this research is done to see how different advanced materials, Carbon, Glass, Kevlar fibers, Ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene and natural fibers with different grades of epoxies have been manufactured, characterized experimentally, evaluated computationally to improve the properties of safety gadgets for multiple ballistic applications. Limitations in terms of materials modelling, their validation also critically analyzed and future framework related to ballistic resistance of materials also proposed.