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Friday, May 23, 2008

How to choose between KEVLAR and SPECTRA

By Marcos Santana

In the last couple of years a lot of improvements have been made, especially in the police and military equipments and gear , improvements that have lead to better safety. The new bullet proof body armor is more comfortable and protective. In the past bulk and discomfort was part of being protected. Thanks to KEVLAR the new body armors for the police and military have greatly reduced weight and size.

Today, there is a new substance in use called Spectra, a composite material that is stronger, lighter, and more flexible than Kevlar, which is changing the face of bullet proof wear for our troops and police forces. What are the major differences between Kevlar and Spectra, and what are the big advantages of the latter?

Kevlar is a high strength, high performance fiber that, despite its many years of use in bullet proof clothing, is still not entirely understood. If we examine the structure of the two we see that Kevlar is made from a high strength and high performance fiber. The idea behind using this as a bullet proof material was to stack several layers of the material together in a weave pattern. A more or less exact description is difficult but you should try to see it is that the molecules form into sheets that then stack themselves around the center of a fiber like spokes.

The weaving would then "catch" the bullet by allowing the fibers to break apart layer by layer and absorb the velocity, slowing the bullet to a stop as it also dulled and flattened from striking the material. However, this was mostly effective when bullets were slower and had less total velocity, making them easier to stop. Now, our troops and law enforcement officials face much more technically advanced weaponry with bullets flying at higher speeds and constructed from harder metals.

Due to these improvements in weaponry we are back to the point of the bulky, heavy and less flexible bullet proof material because the only solution to this advanced weaponry penetrating completely the vests is by adding more and more layers of Kevlar to the fabric.

Since Spectra is a completely new and different technology , there is no need for layers due to the fact that Spectra is not a woven fabric. It is about 40% more lighter than Kevlar which makes it very useful for comfortable bullet proof vests

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