Materials From Tough-as-Nails Crustacean Could Inspire Better Body Armor

carmendrahl writes "The peacock mantis shrimp, a crustacean which is neither a mantis nor a shrimp, has hammer-like clubs for smashing the shells of its prey. They're so strong that regular glass aquariums can't hold them. But what's interested researchers for some time is how the clubs stand up to all that stress. Now, a team has figured out why: the mantis shrimp club's molecular structure is set up to resist fractures. That discovery could lead to stronger and lighter car frames or body armor."

Comments

Re:Stronger, lighter cars?

[wisnoskij]

In some specific situations yes, but in others the occupant is perfectly fine but did thousands of dollars of Damage to their car.
And making a car more bullet resistant is in high demand from many sectors.

Re:Stronger, lighter cars?

[bitt3n]

No. We have already passed the point on the strength axis at which the car survives but the occupants die of internal injuries. For cars, what you need is energy absorption to decelerate the car's contents gradually. That means a body that will crumple.

Body armor, perhaps. Here, the total energy of a typical round is not lethal if it can be spread over a large area of the body. This can be facilitated by stiff materials backed by some padding.

Seems like 'stiff materials backed by some padding' might describe the optimal car design also: an impact-absorbing outer layer (crumple zone), inside of which is an extremely hard shell to prevent debris penetrating and crushing the passenger. On impact, the passenger strapped within the inner shell decelerates by crumpling the outer layer, without the inner layer's being breached by debris, or the passenger's needing to decelerate within the context of the inner layer. In such a model, you would want to make the inner shell as hard as possible. You might even be able to make an even flimsier outer layer if you could make the inner layer harder, resulting in less abrupt deceleration when using harder material.