What exactly does "stand alone" mean in regards to steel plates?  

I get that you don't need soft armor behind them to get to a certain rating but do you still need to be concerned with spall or fragmentation or do steel stand alone plates have a covering to capture the fragments?

You should always wear something behind a standalone plate. Soft armor, a trauma pad, or whatever.

You should especially consider wearing something behind a steel plate. Some steel plates have spall covers and some do not. None are reliable over steel.

I've been investigating the AR500 plates with a bedliner coating and see that guys are getting great results with capturing bullet frag even on multiple hits.  The backside of the AR500 is holding up extremely well also.  There are also examples of repairing the areas that have lost the bedliner and reusing.  All of this sounds very appealing but the whole DIY idea kind of scares me when it comes to saving my life...

If I can get a purpose built steel plate that can take the multiple hits that the AR500 was taking and contain the bullet frag, I'd probably go that route but right now, the DIY AR500 with bedliner seems to be the best thing going...and the price is killer as you can get a front and back for under $100 and then get them coated.

What am I missing here...obviously, I'm quite the newb when it comes to body armor.

When you guys say behind, your talking about Soft Armor against the wearers chest? How would that prevent spalling if the soft armor is BEHIND (thus being against the wearers chest) the steel plate?


I have the steel plate against my body and then the soft armor in FRONT (not against my body) that way it would prevent spalling.

Frag is from the front of the plate.
Spall is from back of plate.
Soft armor behind the plate protects from spalling.

The first animation (grey plate) is an example of spall. The force of the impact "pushes" off chunks from the back of the plate, even though there's no actual penetration. A stand alone plate isn't supposed to do that, but an In-Conjunction-With plate might. The soft armor is enough to catch the spall.

What you're talking about is the fragment of the bullet breaking apart.

That's this:



With steel armor there's no built in mechanism to stop that action, and it can easily cause serious harm to the wearer.



All of this is why I wear ceramic armor.

Excellent examples...so my confusion lies in the fact that it appears some manufacturers make stand alone plates that catch frags and some make stand alone plates that do not.  

The stand alone portion of the description simply means you do not need backers...yes?

Correct. Nothing more, nothing less.

That's not actually how that works.  Spalling is simply pieces of bullet that get broken off the main body, usually jacket material.

It gets spun off after it strikes the plate.

I would disadvise using standalone steel plates, especially curved steel plates.  Mostly because of the amount of energy involved during a strike.

Can you explain more as to why not to use curved stand alone?

Thanks

There are two types of plates, stand along and in conjunction (ICW). The second one will need soft armor backing in order to provide full protection.

You have to decide what you want, protection or mobility.

Both will protect your vitals but if you choose ICW, you will need the backers which will generally weigh more as a complete system and tend to limit your range of movement but will protect non vital areas from pistol rounds and some frag(depending on the vest).

Yes, you don't need backers to pass the NIJ tests, but you probably SHOULD where them to keep from getting more blunt force trama.