Bulletproof Protective Body Armor

Abstract

A bulletproof body armor formed of a pad made of a number of loose sheets woven of heavy gauge nylon threads, with the pad being enclosed within a cloth envelope having a pocket formed therein in the plane of said pad. A semi-flexible metal insert plate is removably arranged within said pocket. The plate comprises a number of plate sections arranged in a common plane, in edge-to-edge contact, one above the other. Each of the edge-to-edge joints is covered by an overlapping cover plate. A flexible cloth-like sheet covers and is adhesively secured to the exposed surfaces of the plate sections to secure them together and permit flexing of the plate transversely to the joints.

Parent Case Text

PARENT APPLICATION

This application is both a divisional and continuation-in-part of my prior application, Ser. No. 251,077 filed May 8, 1972, now U.S. Pat. No. 3,783,449.

Description

BACKGROUND OF INVENTION

Bulletproof protective armor for personal use by human beings, has been made of metal or suitable plastic, bullet resistant, plates fastened together in some way to fit around the wearer's body, and particularly his torso. Such type armor has been very heavy and stiff, thus making it extremely uncomfortable for wear.

In addition, the bullet stopping capabilities of such prior armor has been severely limited since, as a general rule, the bullet stopping capacity has been directly related to the thickness, and thus the weight, of such materials. Hence, a truly effective bulletproofing material of the past available types, is much too heavy to be ordinarily worn by a person.

At best, they could have been worn only for a short time and even then, the limitations on weight have resulted in armor which in fact, will not stop high powered rifle or pistol bullets or those fired at very close range, such as point blank or virtually against the armor.

Thus, there is a need for a relatively lightweight, flexible, easily worn, body armor particularly for use by such class of persons as police officers during normal or relatively known to be dangerous duties and which are capable of stopping most type bullets and whose bullet stopping capacity can be increased at times of increased danger. More particularly, the invention herein relates to a body protective armor insert plate, for adding to a lighter weight armor which can be normally worn by a person.

SUMMARY OF INVENTION

In general, the invention herein contemplates a semi-flexible plate to be added to and used in conjunction with a bulletproof pad made of sheets of woven heavy gauge nylon threads, which pad is enclosed within a cloth envelope provided with suitable shoulder straps or the like for fastening it upon a human torso, and also provided with a pocket for removable insertion of said plate, when needed.

When such pad is made of a suitable number of layers of the woven nylon cloth, as for example about 1 to 2 dozen layers and probably optimumly in the order of 18 layers or so, the pad will stop most common bullets, even at point blank range of only a few inches between the muzzle of the fire arm and the pad. For stopping the few types of more high powered or so-called armor piercing bullets, the added semi-flexible metal plate insert, may be used to cooperate with the pad in stopping even these more powerful types of bullets.

The armor, without the metal plate insert, is sufficiently lightweight, e.g., about 5 pounds, and is sufficiently flexible so as to move with the wearer's body, that it may be normally worn by police officers and others who are engaged in relatively dangerous activity where bullets and similar missiles may be expected, but at unexpected times. However, in more dangerous appearing situations, the wearer may insert the plate into the envelope pocket to increase his protection and yet still be able to relatively easily move due to the semi-flexibility of the plate.

These and other objects and advantages of this invention will become apparent, upon reading the following description, of which the attached drawings form a part.

DESCRIPTION OF DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 illustrates a perspective view of a form of the protective armor herein which may be worn by a person for protecting the front and rear of his torso.

FIG. 2 is an enlarged, cross-sectional view, taken in the direction of arrows 2--2 of FIG. 1 and schematically showing the protective insert metal plate.

FIG. 3 is a perspective view of the cloth blank used for forming the pad containing envelope.

FIG. 4 is a perspective view of one section, including the outer envelope, of the armor and illustrates the metal insert plate being inserted therein.

FIG. 5 is a cross-sectional view, enlarged and fragmentary, of the bulletproof pad.

FIG. 6 is a perspective view of the pad per se.

FIG. 7 is a cross-sectional view taken in the direction of arrows 7--7 of FIG. 1, to an enlarged scale, including schematically showing the metal insert.

FIG. 8 is an enlarged, cross-sectional perspective view of the metal insert.

FIG. 9 is a perspective view of a portion of the insert.

FIG. 10 is a view similar to FIG. 9, but showing a modification.

FIG. 11 is a perspective view of the plate sections forming the modification of FIG. 9.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Referring to FIG. 1, the bulletproof protective armor, generally designated as 10, may be made with a front body section 11 and a rear body protective section 12 connected together by means of suitable shoulder straps 13, which fit over the shoulders of the wearer for suspending the sections fore and aft of his body, with a suitable body encircling belt 14 extending around the sections and the wearer's body, near the waist thereof.

In this form of armor, each protective section is made of a cloth envelope 15 (see FIGS. 2, 4 and 7) which may be made of a single piece of cloth folded in half, to form a front and rear cloth body covering portion 16, with upwardly extending portions 17. The adjacent edges 18 of the body portion part 16 and extensions 17 may be stitched together by suitable stitching. Thereafter, the extensions 17 are reversely tucked into the envelope to form an upwardly opening central pocket 19 for removably receiving a metal insert plate 20 for increasing the protective capabilities of the armor when needed.

The envelope 15 is simply a container for the bulletproof protective pad 21. This pad is made of layers 22 of the cloth with is woven out of heavy gauge, linearly oriented, nylon thread, with a tight weave. By either suitably folding the cloth back and forth, or else by the use of suitable stitching, the sheets or layers making up the pad are connected together along an edge 32 and are otherwise substantially free of connection so as to be relatively flexible, one sheet relative to the next. Although some additional stitching or fastening may be needed to keep the sheets properly together, e.g., along other edges, the major portions of each of the sheets are free to individually flex or move to a considerable extent. Thus, as illustrated in FIG. 6, the pad forming layers or sheets may be stitched together by stitches 24 at their lower corners and also by stitches 25 at their upper corners which also connect the ends of the shoulder straps to the pad, which stitches may be further extended to also connect the envelope to the pad.

The number of layers or sheets of cloth may be varied to meet specific requirements. By way of example, 17 to 18 layers formed of stretch or linearly oriented nylon of approximately 1050 denier, will stop a 45 caliber bullet fired from a pistol with the muzzle located right at the pad surface. Within a range of a few inches up to a foot, virtually all hand gun bullets as well as many rifle bullets will be stopped. This includes such relatively high powered weapons as a 357 magnum, as well as low powered 22 caliber rifle bullets, 38 caliber pistol bullets, and the like. For protection against so called high speed or armor piercing type bullets, the metal plate 20 may be inserted, as described above, giving the additional stopping ability needed for these types of missiles.

The specific type of nylon used may vary as may the degree of linear orientation, and this will affect the number of layers required, requiring the addition of one or more layers to be added or perhaps removed, as the case may be.

Apparently, the nylon material absorbs the energy of the bullet or similar missile in the form of heat energy which may melt or partially melt the points of impact and the closely surrounding areas of the pad, thus stopping the bullet before actual penetration. In many cases, the bullet will simply bounce off the pad, without penetrating at all.

The pad when assembled into the bulletproof armor, in a size suitable to protect the torso of a human being, may be on the order of about 93/4 inches by 141/2 inches in size, with a thickness of approximately 1/2 inch, giving a weight of approximately 21/4 pounds per armor sections. Thus, the entire armor may weight something on the order of less than five pounds.

Of course, the size of the armor may be increased substantially to cover more of the body of the wearer, in which case there will be some slight additional weight. Also, the armor may be so shaped as to protect inanimate objects. The armor itself is sufficiently lightweight and flexible that it may be comfortably worn by such persons as police officers during even normal, as well as dangerous assignments, for protecting the wearer at all times.

Preferably, the envelope is made of the same cloth material as is the pad, thus providing two additional layers to the pad. Also, the belt 14 may be secured to the envelope and the ends of the belt secured together by stitching "Velcro" type cloth patches 26 in the appropriate places. This conventional cloth is formed with napped fibers which interengage to secure opposing patches together.

To make the insert plate flexible enough to bend and conform to the curvature of the wearer's body, it is formed of a number of edge to edge aligned pairs of thin steel plate sections 27-28 (e.g., 1/8 inch thick), with the joints between the pairs overlapped by a narrower cover plate 29. All of the plates are enclosed within a flexible cloth cover material 30 adhesively secured to the exposed surfaces of the plates. Thus, the overlapped, aligned plate sections may flex or move relative to the original flat plane of the insert as indicated in dotted lines in FIG. 8. The insert is thereby relatively flexible in the direction transverse to the joints.

In the modification of FIGS. 10 and 11, two rows of plate sections are used to form the insert plate 20a, with the horizontally extending edge to edge joints of the plates 33 of one row being covered by the plates 34 of the second row. The plates 33 and 34 may all be of the same size, e.g., 3 inches high by 6 inches wide by about 1/8 inch thickness. Thus, the joints of one row are covered by and in face to face contact with the plates of the opposite row. Shorter plates 35 at the upper and lower ends of the row formed by plates 34 equalize the height of the two rows. The plates are covered by cloth or cloth-like material, e.g., wide plastic adhesive tape, as above.

The double thickness plates resist high powered bullets even at the joints. Yet the overall insert plate is semi-flexible, that is, can be bent transversely of the joints, as shown in dotted lines in FIG. 10, due to the flexible covering 30.

Claims

Having fully described an operative embodiment of this invention, I now claim:

1. A semi-flexible, bulletproof metal plate, comprising:

a number of equal size, first, thin, metal plate sections arranged in edge to edge contact, one above the other, in a common plane;

a number of equal size, second thin metal cover plate sections arranged one above the other in a common plane, and each overlapping, in face to face contact with, and extending the length of the edge to edge joints between each adjacent pair of said first plate sections;

a flexible cloth-like covering material covering the exposed surfaces of said first and second sections and adhered thereto and thereby holding the sections together;

whereby said metal plate may be flexibly curved in a direction transverse to said joints.

2. A construction as defined in claim 1, and said second, cover plate sections being considerably narrower, in the direction transverse to the edge to edge joints than said first metal plate sections, thereby exposing surface portions of the first metal plate sections between each adjacent pair of said second cover plate sections.

3. A construction as defined in claim 1 and wherein the adjacent edges of each adjacent pair of said second cover plate sections are likewise arranged in edge to edge contact to thereby form edge to edge joints extending parallel to but offset relative to the edge to edge joints of the first plate sections so that each of the joints of the second cover plate sections are overlapped and covered by a first plate section.

4. In a bulletproof protective armor comprising a relatively flexible pad formed of a number of sheets, such as one to two dozen sheets approximately, of cloth arranged in face to face relationship and secured together with major portions of the sheets being substantially free of positive securement together for relative flexing of each of the sheets, and said cloth being of a tightly woven material formed of a heavy, nylon type thread; and said pad being encased within a flat, cloth-like envelope; and a pocket formed within the envelope and opening at one edge thereof, with the pocket being arranged parallel to the pad sheets; and a metal insert plate removably arranged within said pocket; the improvement comprising:

said metal plate being formed of a number of equal size, first thin, metal plate sections arranged in edge to edge contact, one above the other, in a common plane;

and a number of equal size, second, thin metal cover plate sections arranged one above the other in a common plane, and each overlapping, in face to face contact with, and extending the length of the edge to edge joints between each adjacent pair of said first plate sections;

and a flexible cloth-like covering material covering the exposed surfaces of said first and second sections and adhered thereto and thereby holding the sections together;

whereby said metal plate and the armor portion containing said metal plate may be flexibly curved in a direction transverse to said joints.

5. A construction as defined in claim 4 and including support means for supporting the armor upon a human torso, in a roughly vertical plane, with said pocket arranged roughly vertically and approximately centrally of the side edges forming said envelope and opening along the upper edge of said envelope.