Study of the materials for cut resistance

Abstract

Crime increases year after year. Aggressions using knives, other cut and puncture elements are increasing greatly leading to a real need for security personnel protection, whether public or private, as weapons used are often improvised and can cause damage in various human body parts or even death.

This work is focused on the study of fibrous materials to be used in cut protection clothing. Different knitted fabrics were produced in single jersey based weft knitted with yarns of different compositions, including ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene, para-aramid, high tenacity polyester, high tenacity polyamide and high tenacity polypropylene. Tests have been conducted to analyse the cutting performance index according to the EN388 standard that defines the material performance according to a scale from 0 to 5. The number of cycles required for a material to be cut determines the performance index, which is subsequently converted to the referred scale, where 0 refers to a material that presents no resistance to cut and 5 the material with greater resistance. From the results obtained it was possible to verify that the jersey structure produced with the ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene presents the best performance (4 in the above mentioned scale) and the worst performance is from the jersey structure produced with high tenacity polypropylene yarns that obtained the classification of 1.