Executive Summary : | Body armour is essential for military and law enforcement personnel fighting terrorism, delinquency, and illegal activities like drug trafficking, kidnapping, and extortion. The National Institute of Justice classifies protective armour materials based on their ability to protect against bullets of varying calibres. Traditional body armour is flexible and light, protecting against deformable handgun projectiles, shotgun pellets, and small fragments from grenades. Conventional body armours require rigid plates, which are thick, heavy, and uncomfortable, limiting the wearer's ability to move. To provide protection against high-velocity rifle projectiles, larger shrapnel, and extremely sharp objects, these armours must have high mechanical strength, stiffness, and resilience. Advanced materials, such as composites-based aramid fibers like Kevlar, Dyneema, and Twaron, are widely used in the development of ballistic materials for body armour. These materials offer high strength-to-weight ratios, stiffness, corrosion resistance, improved fatigue life, design freedom, and multi-functionality. The need for flexible, light, and robust body armour necessitates the development of a replacement for the current aramid fiber-based system, which must be less expensive than conventional ballistic vests.
This research project aims to investigate whether graphene can be used to develop body armour systems that are protective, lightweight, and reduce human body injuries from impact and blast loads. The research will involve theoretical, experimental, mechanical and bullet impact tests, and numerical simulation research to achieve this goal. |