Experiment al investigation on preparation and characterization of optimized shear thickening fluids matrix and polypropylene fabric reinforced hybrid composite target structures for soft body armour applications

Abstract

Soft Body armours consist of low speed thread or ballistic threads newlineare commonly made of high performance fibers it involves high cost and newlinecomplex manufacturing process which have low density, high strength, high newlinetenacity and high energy absorption. The conventional method of producing newlinesoft body armours are stacked lamination of 10 - 50 layers of high newlineperformance fabrics combine together and hard body armours consist of rigid newlineare costly, discomfort to use because bulky, heavy weight, non-flexible. In newlineorder to eliminate disadvantages of conventional armors, at present the new newlinearmour preparation concepts has been come into use with coating or newlineimpregnation of shear thickening fluids (STFs) onto soft body armours or newlineliquid body armours. STFs are used within the fabrics to improve the newlinemechanical properties of tensile strength, modulus, stab resistances and newlinepuncture resistance due to its rheological properties of fluid flow behaviour newlineunder strong impact and STF suspension become a rigid solid and it is newlinereversible, so that the fluids turn to the initial liquid state after removing the newlineimpact from the medium. newlineThe main objective of this analysis is to develop next generation newlinelow cost, high quality hybrid composite material and better protection level newlinesoft body armors with the coating or impregnation of optimized shear newlinethickening fluids onto fabrics and also it is used as a core of hybrid composite newlinetarget structure. In this analysis, for the preparation of optimized (40%, 50%, newline57%, 60% and 80% ) volume fraction STFs, dispersed synthesized silica newlinemicroparticles which have different morphology and particle size (flakes newlinesilica 335and#956;m, spherical silica 342and#956;m, micro spheres silica 370and#956;mand newline276and#956;m) and various synthesis methods were employed. newline