The wounding characteristics of spherical steel fragments in live tissues.

This paper reports the wounding effectiveness tests of four kinds of spherical steel fragments, striking against live tissues at various velocities. The most pronounced wound characteristic for the spherical fragments was that the entrances were larger than the exits; the higher the striking velocity, the larger the size of the wound. The skin near the entrance tended to be torn away when the striking velocity was above 1,200 m/s. As a general rule, most exits appeared to be circular with a diameter slightly bigger than that of the fragment. Shapes of the wound channels were conic in general. The channel volumes were proportional to the striking velocities of the fragments; in the case of two spheres having the same striking energy, the small one would produce larger volume of wound channel and amount of debrided tissues. The energy release rate for smaller fragments was higher than that for larger ones.