Blast-Proof Fabric Resists Multiple Explosions

An anonymous reader tips a Gizmodo story on a fabric whose properties are counterintuitive, to say the least of it. "Zetix is a fabric so strong it will resist multiple car bomb blasts without breaking. It absorbs and disperses the energy from explosions... it can be used in body armor, window covering, military tents, and hurricane defenses... [and] it can be used as medical sutures that won't damage body tissue. All of this is thanks to a property that apparently defies the laws of physics: helical-auxetics, objects that actually get fatter the more you stretch them. The concept makes my head want to explode, but when you see it in action it actually makes sense."

Comments

Energy dissipation

[Anonymous Coward]

So how is the energy dissipated? Since energy is force times distance, how much force needs to be applied, or how much displacement of the fabric is needed to dissipate this energy?

Just as a physicist, this idea doesn't pass the smell test. Never mind a ballistics expert or materials scientist...

Re:Energy dissipation

[ecklesweb]

Saw another kind of body armor on TV called Dragon Skin that's made of interlinked disks that also claim to spread the impact. Took armor piercing rifle rounds without penetration. They put a dummy wearing it on top of a fragmentation grenade and blew it up with no penetration through the vest. Crazy stuff.

Re:Energy dissipation

[Em Adespoton]

OK, now imagine it stretched over titanium-frame or carbon-nanotube-frame body armor. The trick is to create some tension on the material and some distance between it and the body. You need a frame that can take the stresses of the material and the impacts, and combine that with the stopping power of the material.

Personally though, I'd rather see something like this used in car parts (bumpers, convertible roofs, tires, etc).

This will not stop all damage however

[WillAffleckUW]

Fabric can resist damage - but the concussion waves (especially lethal in water explosions) will still cause damage.

As an example, there are current studies on the link between multiple concussive explosion attacks on soldiers - a higher proportion of US soldiers in Iraq may in fact develop Parkinsonian diseases as a result of multiple exposures to blasts from car bombs and other similar attacks.

So, this will help with shrapnel and some damage, but will not solve the total risk factor.

Re:Fat pants

[jacksonj04]

As any fool doth know, the condom goes on the erect penis, not on a flaccid one!

This has been a public service announcement.

Chinese Finger Traps?

[darthservo]

Just letting my mind wander - were a Chinese Finger Trap made from this material, would it let go of your fingers as you applied tension?

Looking forward to civilian applications of this..

[ndykman]

I'd be thrilled to have a motorcycle jacket and armour made better by this stuff.

Re:No miracles, no defying the laws of physics

[BlueStraggler]

this won't do anything for bullets (or swords)

Good news for pirates, then!

More seriously, I think it will work for bullets, since bullets burst fabrics by stretching them to the point of failure (and bullet-proof fabrics like Kevlar work by having a high tensile strength). The only question becomes how far does the bullet have to stretch the fabric until the strength rises enough to stop it? More than a couple of inches, and the bullet is into your internal organs anyway, so you have to reduce the looseness and flexibility of the fabric to prevent that from happening. The most obvious way to do that is the same way you do it for conventional bullet-proof vests: by adding hard plates or other rigid materials into the vest. The difference here is you might be able to use light materials that are themselves not bullet-proof (eg. wood, foam). The bullet could puncture these materials easily, but in dragging the material into the resulting bullet hole, the stretch factor would rise very rapidly and the fabric would suddenly become very strong.

Re:I can't help but wonder...

[spikedvodka]

This may not be useful for your everyday Joe on the street, but it'll probably be used as another layer for the Nomex bomb suits they already wear while disarming a bomb. You mean those suits that all they're good for is to make the remains more identifiable...

If you're sitting on top of a bomb when it goes off, I don't care what you're wearing... you're toast. If I have to disarm a bomb... I'm either going to succeed, fail & buy the farm, or know I'm going to fail, and walk away. don't give me a suit that keeps me from running if I have to, give me my dykes, a voltmeter, a pair of good running shoes, and a black T-Shirt with big yellow letters:
Bomd Squad Technician - If you see me running, try to catch up!