The present invention relates to a textile sheet material having improved mechanical stability, more particularly having stab and/or ballistic resistance, and offering protective performance against chemical and/or biological poisons, and also to protective materials, such as protective suits, protective gloves, protective shoes and protective coverings, produced using the textile sheet material of the invention and/or including the textile sheet material of the invention. The present invention further relates to using the textile sheet material of the invention for production of protective materials of any kind, more particularly as hereinabove recited.
Persons active in the field of threat prevention, such as security personnel, police officers, border guards and also soldiers in military units, when deployed in the event of demonstrations, civil, unrest or military confrontations for example, axe often confronted with direct physical violence due to the use of firearms and/or stabbing weapons for example. Against the background that the use of firearms and/or stabbing weapons will often result in serious injuries to persons affected by the violence, there is an immense need in the prior art to protect such persons from dangers associated with the use of firearms and/or stabbing weapons. A high shrapnel-protective effect of the corresponding protective apparel is also very important, more particularly for soldiers on the battlefield and/or in battlefield action.
In general, protective apparel pieces having ballistic- and/or stab-resistant properties are designed so as to prevent any penetration of a body of a wearer of the protective apparel as a consequence of an attack with a weapon and/or with a sharp/pointed object. In effect, it is necessary for the protective apparel piece in question to be equipped with appropriate devices and/or technical measures that lead no appropriate protective performance, while the prior art often utilizes additional laminate materials to prevent penetration of the apparel piece and hence of the body of a wearer of the protective apparel by being fired at or by the action of a knife thrust.
In this connection, it is often disadvantageous in the prior art that the known protective apparel pieces, which can take the form of a vest or the like for example, occasionally utilize protective materials of very high basis weight and very low flexibility, and this significantly reduces the wearing comfort of the protective apparel piece and constitutes an additional inconvenience for the wearer. However, this is immensely disadvantageous in the context of a deployment, for example a military deployment, since the wearer can thereby be limited in his or her performance and mobility.
More particularly, the prior art has hitherto failed to adequately provide apparel pieces that combine in one material the properties of high protective performance against ballistics and high protective performance against stabbing. This is because the prior art protective apparel pieces are optimized in respect of their bulletproof performance, which is primarily designed to prevent the penetration of ballistic projectiles emanating from firearms. Protective apparel pieces of this type, however, do not always also ensure high protective performance against the penetration or pointed objects, for example knives, blades, chisels or the like. In addition, the prior art protective apparel with stab-resistant properties often is incapable of withstanding large force impacts due to ballistic projectiles, and thus particularly is not capable of offering any protective function with regard so ballistic impacts.
It is further disadvantageous in the prior art that the known protective apparel pieces having elevated stab and/or ballistic resistance have no protective function whatsoever with regard to chemical and/or biological poison and/or warfare agent materials, so that deployments where there is a risk, of exposure to toxic substances, for example the vesicatory Hd (interchangeably known as Yellow Cross or mustard gas) and the nerve agent sarin, either have to proceed without any protective function with regard to these poison materials, or alternatively require an additional protective apparel with optimization in this regard to be worn, which is similarly disadvantageous.