New types of armor could be used as a shield on military vehicles to provide better protection against bullets, as well as on spacecraft to mitigate the impacts of meteorite debris.
Like this rubber nanomaterial whose armor power exceeds steel or Kevlar and that has been developed by engineers from the University of Wisconsin – Madison.
Rubber nanomaterial
Engineers have conceived ultrathin films just 75 nanometers thick of a relatively common polymer: semicrystalline poly (vinylidene fluoride-co-trifluoroethylene).
According to Ramathasan Thevamaran, professor of engineering physics at UW-Madison, and postdoctoral research associate Jizhe Cai have shown thus that the material was superior in dissipating energy from microprojectile impacts over a wide range of velocities. As Thevamaran explains:
When we reduced the polymer to this nanometer length scale, we found that its internal microstructure completely changed unexpectedly compared to its larger scale. Surprisingly, the energy absorption mechanisms in the material became very prominent, and we found that this particular polymer performed significantly better than any other materials, both large materials and previously reported nanomaterials, at absorbing energy from projectiles.
With everything, Thevamaran warns that the rubbery nature of this material would make it difficult to use for applications such as bulletproof vests., because bullet impacts would protrude into the material and could cause blunt trauma injuries to the user.
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The news
This new material resists the impact of projectiles better than steel or Kevlar
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.