Wednesday, January 7, 2009

How to choose between KEVLAR and SPECTRA

By Marcos Santana

In the past being protected by body armor was synonymous for bulk, weight , uncomfortable and mass. However over the years, many manufacturers like Dupont have gone a long way to improve the traditional body armors for police and the military especially when they introduced KEVLAR. KEVLAR has increased the protection and comfort of the body armor while reducing the mass and weight.

A new material is changing the face of bullet proof gear for soldiers and police officers. The new substance is called SPECTRA and is a lot stronger, flexible and lighter than KEVLAR. The advantages seem to be obvious but what are they exactly and how do the security forces benefit from SPECTRA ?

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.

In the past when bullets had less velocity and were not constructed from extremely hard materials, Kevlar did a fine job. When a bullet hit a bullet proof vest the different layers of Kevlar reduced the velocity and flatted the bullet while braking layer after layer. This was a very effective way to stop those bullets but today bullets are made of harder materials and the technically very advanced weaponry give the bullets a very high speed.

This means that Kevlar vests are stretched to capacity and sometimes even penetrated completely by these forceful weapons. The only answer with this material is to thicken the layers of weave, which make the material even bulkier, heavier, and less flexible.

Spectra is a completely new and different technology. Spectra is about 40% lighter than Kevlar which makes it a lot more comfortable. Spectra is not been woven which only helps reducing even more the weight and bulk as there is no need for several layers. - 16747

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