Evaluation of tungsten tin and lead projectiles against real and synthetic bones encased in ballistic gelatin

In this work a new type of small-arms ammunition is evaluated to determine its capability of producing wound trauma. This new ammunition dispenses the toxic lead core of conventional bullets in favor of a non-toxic pressed tungsten and tin powder core. The testing involved firing rifle and pistol caliber tungsten tin and lead bullets against real porcine bones encased in ballistic gelatin. The lead bullets were used to establish a benchmark of performance for the tungsten tin bullets to be measured against. Various metrics, such as penetration depth, bullet fragment weight and size, and bone fragment weight and size were recorded. It was found that the tungsten tin rifle bullets averaged a substantially deeper post-bone penetration depth than the lead rifle bullets. It was also found that the tungsten tin pistol bullets behaved in much the same manner as the lead pistol bullets but that the tungsten tin pistol bullets generated a higher collective weight of real organic bone fragments than the lead pistol bullets. The use of real bones in the evaluation of the new projectiles presented the opportunity to test a real bone substitute under the same projectile impacts. This synthetic bone was shot with the same sequence of bullets used against the real bones. Bone fragments were then measured for weight and size to evaluate uniformity. The synthetic bone was found promising, but was not ultimately more uniform than real bones under projectile impact.