Investigation of the high-strain rate (shock and ballistic) response of the elastomeric tissue simulant Perma-Gel®

• Plate-impact and ballistics tests on the epithelial/muscular analogue Perma-Gel®.
• Us-up and σx-up/σx-v equations-of-state established for the first time.
• Perma-Gel's® high-rate compressibility tentatively linked to ballistic response.
• Importance of individual tissue analogue material properties highlighted.
• Importance of composite rather than individual simulants noted.

For 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.

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