16 Aug 2006 1010H

Liquid armor

I watched a video recently (in fact the one above) that showed a new form of armor treated with a liquid that goes rigid when it’s struck by something of great force, like a .45 slug, for instance. As you can see here, the bullet, which looks like a pretty big round too, literally flattens itself against the armor and bounces off. Freaking incredible material. Apparently, it is a kind of shear thickening fluid made of nanoparticles, which is bad ass. Sounds like something out of science fiction, right? No joke, read here.

Now, my concerns are, all that kinetic energy has to go somewhere. I suppose it gets transferred to the nanoparticles that make the fluid go into the rigid state, but, is it enough that there isn’t a lot of heat, like kevlar now, and excess energy that could be translated into a very heavy blow, possibly causing internal damage to bones and organs? As you can see above, the impact causes quite a big wave throughout the armor. And the other concern is that the fluid not be too rigid that under repeated impacts, say, under suppression fire, in solid state it fractures and the armor becomes compromised.

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