SVI Engineering, leading specialist manufacturer of armoured products, has released the fourteenth and final episode in Season One of its innovative Shoot Through series of videos, this time demonstrating how a 40 mm thick pane of specialist ballistic glass is able to stop an AK47 round.
“In the previous episode, we saw that five Toyota Hilux side windows were no match for an AK47 round. So, what sort of glass can handle fire from this ubiquitous assault rifle? Time to demonstrate the strength and ingenuity of our B6-rated 40 mm ballistic glass,” said Nicol Louw, SVI Business Development Director.
So, SVI secured the bullet-resistant glass pane at the far end of its dedicated underground shooting range before unleashing a round from an AK47 mounted in a test rig. As shown in the footage captured by a Photron Fastcam SA4 high-speed camera – generously supplied by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and set at 30 000 frames per second – the 7.62×39 mm conventional steel-core round is stopped in its tracks by the multi-layer sample.
“This is the bullet-resistant glass we use in our popular B6 Stopgun V2.0 armouring packages. It consists of multiple layers of carefully laminated glass and engineering plastics. When a bullet impacts the outermost layer, the softer layers underneath absorb and spread the energy, ultimately stopping the projectile from entering the vehicle,” explained Jaco de Kock, CEO of SVI.
‘Shoot through’ series background
Conceived to both inform and entertain, Season One of the Shoot Through video series – an episode was published on SVI’s YouTube channel approximately every two weeks – set out to answer whether various (mostly standard) automotive components could stop a round discharged by a firearm.
The subject of the first episode in SVI’s Shoot Through series was a ventilated steel brake disc from a Toyota Land Cruiser 79 bakkie, while the second episode featured a Volkswagen Polo engine block, the third a shock absorber, the fourth a Polo cylinder head, the fifth a seatbelt mechanism, the sixth a window lifter motor, the seventh a Ford Everest owner’s manual, the eighth a car battery, the ninth three layers of Kevlar, the tenth a 3 mm mild-steel plate, the eleventh a 6 mm mild-steel plate, the twelfth a 6 mm armoured-steel plate and the thirteenth five Toyota Hilux side windows.
The company
SVI is an original equipment manufacturer that has specialised in armoured vehicles since 2004. The company is a market leader in Africa, serving the private, corporate, security, mining and governmental segments. SVI holds a Level 2 B-BBEE certification and its quality management system is certified to ISO 9001:2015 by TÜV Rheinland.
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