Soft body armour development by silica particle based shear thickening fluid coated p-aramid fabrics

Abstract

Soft body armour panels using p-aramid (Technora) fabrics with three different levels of thread densities were developed in this research. Shear thickening fluid (STF) was synthesized using silica nano-particle (100 nm) and polyethylene glycol (PEG). Fabrics were coated with 60% (w/w) STF to improve their resistance against low-velocity bullets (165 m s⁻¹). For neat fabrics, all the bullets fired from 0.38″ calibre revolver pierced the multilayer fabric panel. However, impact energy absorption increased with the increase in thread density in fabric. After coating with shear thickening fluid, panels having four layers of fabric stopped all the bullets fired. It was possible to reduce the weight of panel by 23% after the STF treatment whilst ensuring bullet stoppage.

Keywords:

• Aramid
• ballistic evaluation
• body armour
• composite materials
• fibre technology
• shear thickening fluid (stf)

Acknowledgement

The authors are grateful to Terminal Ballistics Research Laboratory (TBRL), Chandigarh, India, for the financial support and technical assistance in this research work (Grant no: TBRL/CARS/61/2014).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.