To better protect soldiers from blast threat, it is necessary to develop an adapted injury criterion and, prior to this, to evaluate the response of a biological model against that threat. The objective of this study is to provide some robust data to quantify the thoracic response of post‐mortem swine under five different blast loadings.

A total of 47 experiments were performed on seven female post‐mortem swine (54.5±2.6 kg), placed side‐on to the threat and against the ground. Their thorax were instrumented with a piezo‐resistive pressure sensor and an accelerometer directly exposed to the shock‐wave, and a target was mounted on the latter in order to track the ribcage displacement.

For incident impulses ranging from 47 kPa.ms ± 2% to 173 kPa.ms ± 6%, the measured maximum of linear thoracic acceleration (Γmax) goes from 5,800 m/s ± 16% to 41,000 m/s ± 8%, with a duration of 0.8ms. Ribcage displacement ranging from 5 mm ± 20% to 20 mm ± 15%, with a duration of 9 ms, are reached. These reproducible data were used to find simple relations (linear, 2nd and 3rd order polynomials) between the kinematic parameters (plus the viscous criterion) and the incident impulses.

Correlating the new experimental data with the prediction from the Bowen curves showed a lung injury threshold in terms of Γmax similar that of by Cooper (10,000 m/s²). However, the limits defined for the viscous criterion in the automobile field (1 m/s for AIS3+) and for non‐lethal weapons (0.8 m/s) seems not adapted for the blast threat.