Experimental and numerical evaluation of REGUPOL E43 mechanical and ballistic properties

Rubber-like materials due to their costs and properties are often used for broad civil and military applications starting from outdoor children playgrounds floor pavement up to indoor shooting ranges bullet traps or ricochet mitigating surfaces. For a notorious trade mark, namely REGUPOL E43, mechanical and ballistic tests were performed in order to look into some of its main mechanical and ballistic properties. Mechanical tests performed on REGUPOL E43 aimed to evaluate the dependency of engineering stress on engineering strain for quasi-static loading and its ability to absorb energy. The ballistic tests were focused on evaluating the ballistic limit and a critical angle above which the risk of ricochet for a 9 × 19 mm ball shoot against a REGUPOL E43 sheet is no longer possible for meaningful impact velocities. The approach used was twofold, experimental and numerical. The numerical results were compared against experimental ones showing a fair correlation between the two sets.