An experimental investigation into ballistic performance of woven fabrics with single and multiple layers

One of the challenges in improving the protective performance of flexible body armor is optimizing woven fabric, so it is critical to understand how different fabrics and fabric arrangements with the same areal density affect their ballistic resistance. An object of this article is to comparatively investigate the ballistic resistance of single-layer and multi-layer woven fabrics with the same areal density. Four single-layer fabrics with areal densities of 70, 125, 200, and 280 g/m(2) were selected, and multi-layer fabrics (comprising two, three, and four layers) were assembled by folding a single-layer fabric with an areal density of 70 g/m(2). Ballistic impact tests were carried out on the single-layer and multi-layer fabrics to compare their ballistic resistance. The results show that the specific energy absorption of the multi-layer fabric assembly is more than 7% higher than that of the single layer fabric; the multi-layer fabric mainly improves the ballistic resistance by increasing dynamic in-plane force, while the single-layer fabric does so by increasing the maximum transverse deflection. Moreover, from the perspective of fabric application in the flexible body armor, the energy absorption at ballistic limit of the single-layer and multi-layer fabrics was transformed into energy absorption per unit transverse displacement, and the index of the multi-layer fabric is obviously better than that of the single-layer fabric.