Effects of grazing ballistic impacts on combat helmets and behind helmet blunt trauma

The current work experimentally studies the damage and injuries caused by grazing gunshot impacts on contemporary composite combat helmets. This study deduces that four failure modes are likely to occur on the protection system after impact of such nature. Micro-CT scans of the synthetic skulls used in these experiments do not show cranial fractures and surface damage, suggesting that the researched combat helmets efficiently dissipate the impact energy from multiple shots at multiple locations. The present research also proves that projectiles impacting a combat helmet at an oblique angle are likely to follow its geometry, rather than travel in a straight motion.