Stabbing resistance of body armour panels impregnated with shear thickening fluid

Abstract

Please cite this article as: Xu, Y., Chen, X., Wang, Y., Yuan, Z., Stabbing r esistance of body ar mour panels impr egnated with shear thickening fluid, Composite Structures (2016), doi: http://dx.doi.org/10. 1016/ j.compstruct.2016.12.056 This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. Stabbing resistance of body armour panels impregnated with shear thickening fluid AbstractThis paper presents an investigation on the use of shear thickening fluid (STF) to improve stabbing resistance of soft ballistic body armour. STFs were produced from polyethylene glycol and silica nanoparticles. The effects of silica nanoparticle sizes and silica nanoparticle weight fraction were studied and STFs made with the different compositions were used to impregnate the Twaron ® woven fabrics. Systemic investigations into rheological behaviour of STF were carried out experimentally on STFs with different compositions. STF impregnated woven fabric panels were created and tested for stabbing resistance. Stabbing impact tests were conducted on 6 different types of STF impregnated fabric panels against 2 untreated fabric panels, and the results were studied against the benchmark fabrics without STF impregnation. Based on the same number of layers of fabric, the STF impregnation improves the stabbing resistance notably. For same panel areal density, the STF impregnated panels outperform the untreated fabric panel. The results of this research indicate the possibility of lighter ballistic panel materials for higher stabbing protection. It was also found that higher nanoparticle weight fraction and larger nanoparticle size of silica leads to better stabbing resistance performance among the STF impregnated panels.

The effect of graphene on the yarn pull-out force and ballistic performance of Kevlar fabrics impregnated with shear thickening fluids

“…A great deal of work has been done on the response and failure mechanism of fabric integrated with STFs. Some studies focused on the stab resistance and yarn pull-out behaviour of fabric impregnated with STF to analyse how STF affects the friction force between yarns [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. Feng et al [7] investigated the effect of size and type of nanoparticle on the stab resistance and yarn pull-out force of fabric treated with STF, while Gong et al [8] studied the influence of the STF and the pull-out speed on pull-out force of Kevlar/STF fabrics.…”

Effects of silica morphology on the shear‐thickening behavior of shear thickening fluids and stabbing resistance of fabric composites

“…More recently, due to their energy absorption characteristics during in shear thickening, STFs have been used in combination with protective fabrics to improve their anti‐ballistics, ‐stab, and ‐puncture properties as soft body armor. Various composite materials were prepared with STF and other fabrics such as aramid, ultra‐high‐molecular weight polyethylene, or cotton fabrics . The performance of STF has an important impact on the protective properties of composites.…”

A Review on Stab and Spike Resistance Performance of Shear Thickening Fluids (STF) Impregnated Fabrics

“…Yu et al [25] in their studies have conducted experiment to show the relationship between STF rheological properties and stab resistance of STF impregnated fabric. Their prepared three different weight fraction using same silica particle size for stabbing testing and the rheological properties result is shown on Fig.…”

“…Xu et al [25] studied stab resistance of Twaron woven fabric impregnated with shear thickening fluid. In their research, rheological properties of STF show that shear thickening behaviour onset at shear rate values between 2s -1 and 70s -1 depending on the particle size and solid volume fraction.…”