Liquid armour.

Could'nt see this anywhere else on ATS, just wondered if anyone else had seen this clip of this experimental flexible kevlar armour?

www.break.com...

CX.

it is done using a non newtonian fluid. It solidifies when a strain is placed upon it. A similar effect can be done by mixing cornflour with small amount of water. if you dont touch it, it is a fluid but if you try to move your finger through it, it will solidify. Another method is to use custard powder (this allowed a guy to recently walk across a swimming pool filled with water.

have to say it's a great application of the theory tho!

I dunno . . . that stuff looked pretty thin, and unless thay are going to beef it up with padding and make it hell heavy, it would probably break bones while stopping the bullet's velocity. Indeed, it totally reverses the bullet and makes it spring backwards, thereby exerting even mroe pressure on the wearers body. And they make it sound like kevlar letting bullets though is a bad thing, while usually it is not, as the bullet is slowed down enough so as to allow the skin to stop it.

I would not like a little dinky piece of that stuff protecting my crouch. Impact forces = OUCH!@#$@

edit:dunno how to spel

[edit on 18/7/2006 by watch_the_rocks]

You would need the whole "shell" to harden, thus distributing the impact force of the projectile over a wide area.

If the only piece of the vest that hardens is the actual point of impact, blunt trauma from something like a 7.62x51mm impact would be potentially life threatening in its own right, even with a total lack of penetration.

This talk of shock injuries reminds me of some body armour that we were asked to test whist i was serving in Crossmaglen a few years back. It was when the IRA sniper was shooting our lads with the .50 cal Barratt, and obviously they were'nt fairing to well aginst it.

The armour they gave us, i posted a thread about it ages ago with pics, was apparently tried and tested capable of stopping a .50 cal round, so we were made to wear this stuff on a few patrols to see if it was and give some feedback as to it's wearability.

We were told that this armour had been tried on the side of a live pig on the ranges and it stopped the round from 600m, however, the pig was blown halway down the range and died from massive internal shock injuries.

CX.