Developed ultralight armor material that outperforms Kevlar

One of the biggest factors to be overcome in the development of wearable armor is weight. A group of researchers announced that they have developed a new type of ultralight armor material, which they describe as a “nanofiber mat”, that performs better than Kevlar and steel.

A new material for armors

Engineers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have developed a product that blends multi-walled carbon nanotubes with Kevlar nanofibers to provide better protection against high-velocity projectile impacts than existing products.

The researchers tried many methods to improve the current product and eventually synthesized Kevlar nanofibers and incorporated very small amounts into carbon nanotube mats that form hydrogen bonds between the fibers. These hydrogen bonds changed the interactions between the nanofibers, and with the right mix of Kevlar nanofibers and carbon nanotubes, a high increase in the performance of the overall material was achieved.

The researchers conducted impact tests with a system that uses lasers to shoot microprojectiles into material samples they developed.

Ramathasan Thevamaran, who led the research, said: “The hydrogen bond is a dynamic bond, meaning it can be constantly broken and reshaped. This allows it to dissipate large amounts of energy throughout the dynamic process. In addition, hydrogen bonds are more involved in this interaction that strengthens and hardens the nanofiber mat. “When we changed the interfacial interactions in our mats by adding Kevlar nanofibers, we were able to achieve about 100% improvement in energy dissipation performance at certain supersonic impact rates.” made statements.

With impact resistance It is expected that the new material developed together will be stable at very high and very low temperatures, and will form the basis of not only bulletproof wearable armors, but also all kinds of high-performance ultra-light armors.