New experimental ballistics facility opens at Kent

University of Kent Experimental Ballistics Facility

Kent’s School of Natural Sciences has recently opened a new experimental ballistics facility for teaching and research, adding to its unique portfolio of specialist forensics facilities.

Ballistics, the science of the propulsion, flight, and impact of projectiles, has a range of applications including: informing crime scene investigations, improving wound care and helping to design safer buildings.

Forensic science students and researchers will use the new facility on our Canterbury campus to build an understanding of how gun bullets behave within a crime scene and how different projectiles might behave in the body and how this might feed into the wound created. The facility will enhance undergraduate and postgraduate students’ experiences of learning how shooting scenes are restructured and how ballistics are investigated.

The walls in the ballistics facility are lined with anti-ricochet panels with a bank of rubber at the end to absorb the bullets. Guns can be positioned and secured in place with high-end equipment. There is a piece of equipment that can simulate any gun, while square frames can be used to measure a bullet’s velocity. There is also a ventilation system built in to remove any chemicals produced by the shooting of the bullet away from the people using the facility.

Students and researchers will also be able to analyse bullets from crime scenes (to relate them back to particular firearms) using Kent’s cutting-edge comparison microscope.

External organisations with a ballistics testing need will also be able to hire the facility.

Equipment in Kent's Experimental Ballistics Facility