TAGS: Transparency
Army scientists are researching polymer networks for vehicle armor to support the next generation combat vehicle. This futuristic Army vehicle is one of the service’s modernization priorities.
Army scientists have fine-tuned chemical properties to produce a new material that can be as transparent as glass but performs under the intense conditions expected by Soldiers. This new material is completely customizable as researchers can control the stiffness, toughness and ballistic impact performance, yet maintain high optical clarity.
Glass-like Clarity for Greater Performance
Glass-like optical clarity can be maintained at every composition investigated by the researchers. The team has a more fundamental insight on how the length of crosslinking units influences high rate impact performance of polymer networks.
The ballistic performance of some of the networks synthesized is up to 400% greater than the performance of a pure methacrylate polymer. Researchers have demonstrated a new class of highly transparent, methacrylate-based polymer networks.
This boost is because of a crosslinking agent they used to create the network. When the length of this crosslinking agent is just right, the ballistic performance improves significantly, said Army materials research engineer Dr. Kevin Masser. When it comes to the production of acrylic, this research has extended previous research efforts.
“We were able to use the highly customizable nature of these networks to explore what happens when the ductility of the crosslinker is very high, very low or some intermediate value,” Masser said.
Source: U.S. Army