High Strain Rate Characterization of Shock Absorbing Materials for Landmine Protection Concepts

Development of Shock Absorbing Barrier Materials for High Performance Magazine Construction

To prevent sympathetic detonation in a high performance magazine, barriers between stacks of munitions absorb donor fragments. Acceptor munitions may still initiate on impact of barrier debris or on being thrown into the walls of the magazine itself. These shocks can be reduced to a safe level by increasing the barrier's mass which reduces its velocity and the imparted shock. In addition a poro...

High Strain Rate Characterization of Advanced High Strength Steels

Uncovering high-strain rate protection mechanism in nacre

Under high-strain-rate compression (strain rate approximately 10(3) s(-1)), nacre (mother-of-pearl) exhibits surprisingly high fracture strength vis-à-vis under quasi-static loading (strain rate 10(-3) s(-1)). Nevertheless, the underlying mechanism responsible for such sharply different behaviors in these two loading modes remains completely unknown. Here we report a new deformation mechanism, ...

Periodic Architecture for High Performance Shock Absorbing Composites

A novel composite architecture consisting of a periodic arrangement of closely-spaced spheres of a stiff material embedded in a soft matrix is proposed for extremely high damping and shock absorption capacity. Efficacy of this architecture is demonstrated by compression loading a composite, where multiple steel balls were stacked upon each other in a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) matrix, at a low...

CORRIGENDUM: Periodic Architecture for High Performance Shock Absorbing Composites

The Acknowledgements section in this Article is incomplete; it should also contain the following statement: ‘‘We would also like to thank Dr. Chiara Daraio of ETZ Zurich and Dr. Jordan R. Raney of Baylor University, Waco for discussion and development of the idea and US Army Research Office (under ICB contract) for partial financial support.’’ SUBJECT AREAS: MECHANICAL ENGINEERING POLYMERS COMP...