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It seems scarcely credible that thin polymer fibers, bound together in resin, can stop projectiles ranging from a hand-gun bullet to a high-power rifle round, but they can and have done so, saving many lives in the process. Composite body armor protects a wide range of civilians from security guards to police officers and from bailiffs to VIPs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with a possibility of the local repairing of damaged composite armours. The proposed repairs can be performed directly in the field, allowing thus to recover the full ballistic protection in a short time. Several solutions (temporary or permanent) were designed and tested both experimentally and using numerical simulations. Overlapping of the damaged area with patch from armour steel after filling the hole with ceramic balls showed to be optimal as a temporary repair. The calculation clearly showed that the depth of penetration of the projectile is reduced in all cases of designed permanent repairs in comparison to original armour configuration. The experiments confirmed supposed enhancing of ballistic resistance, but only some repair techniques met the requirements of multi-hit testing. However, the reason of failure after multi-hit could be clearly explained with the help of used numerical simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]