2015/08/21 by Elizabeth I. Keys, Amy Courtney, Keys, Elizabeth +3
Materials Science · Medicine · #FOS: Physical sciences #High-Velocity Impact and Material Behavior #Popular Physics (physics.pop-ph) #Traumatic Ocular and Foreign Body Injuries
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1508.05843
openalex publication_date 2015/08/21 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
High-speed video has emerged as an valuable tool for quantifying bullet performance in ballistic gelatin. This paper presents the results of testing four .357 SIG bullets using high-speed video of bullet impacts in ballistic gelatin to determine retarding force curves, permanent cavities, temporary cavities, and energy deposit vs. penetration depth. Since the methods are identical, results are meaningfully compared with four 9mm NATO bullets studied in an earlier project. Though .357 SIG bullets perform slightly better due to higher impact energy, the principal finding is that there is a much bigger difference in performance between the best and worst performing bullets in each cartridge than there is between bullets of similar design in the two cartridges. In each cartridge, higher performing expanding bullets (jacketed hollow points) outperform non-expanding bullets (full metal jacket) by a wide margin, showing a much higher probability of rapid incapacitation according to an Army Research Laboratory model by Neades and Prather (1991).