Armor component

Abstract

An armor component for protecting a body from a high speed projectile, such as a bullet from a handgun or a rifle, and which is capable of flattening and trapping. The armor may include in combination with the component, which serves as an outer component, an inner component used in a garment or similar article, for spreading the impact of the bullet striking the outer component. The outer component, which is designed for flattening and trapping a bullet, may include a pair of layers of flexible material at least the inner layer of which it high impact-resistant material, and has at least two juxtaposed layers of hard beads between the flexible layers. The beads in the adjacent layers are disposed with beads thereof inter-nested in the inter-bead spaces of each other. The volume occupied by the layers of beads is preferably substantially void of all other material. The beads of each layer may be arranged in a regular close-packed lattice pattern, i.e., a hexagonal or square so that each bead contacts its immediately adjacent neighbor beads. A garment using an outer part of this type is light and flexible but is capable of trapping the bullet with little risk of spalling of the parts of the component.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.