All right folks, so you’re probably going to need to help set me straight on this, but there were a couple of interesting presentations at the armor conference regarding nano-fibers — particularly the construction of carbon fiber nano-tubes in a lab environment.
The impact on the body armor industry if this technology could be produced on a large scale is huge. One of my body armor buds told me if fully realized, “a big football player could flip a tank over” that’s made out of the stuff.
Whoa!
The long and the short of it is that several researchers (particularly university labs) have been able to construct microscopic tubular structures out of carbon fiber and extrude them into long weaves of nanites. The stuff is incredibly lightweight, but stronger than steel. According to experts, if this stuff is wrapped around strands of aramid fibers like Kevlar, Dyneema or Spectra Shield, the ballistic resistance yield would be huge — as would the weight reduction.
For example: I used two Level III plates during my last trip to Iraq that weighed about four pounds and were made of aramid materials like Dyneema [thank you to my bros at Protective Products who hooked me with the totally sweet set of 11014 plates. They saved my back and would have definately saved my butt if I’d needed them to]. There was no boron carbide (ceramic) plating in them at all. They could withstand a standard AK round, but not an armor piercing one.
With the nano-fibers, my understanding is that you could realize Level IV or even Level V ballistic protection with the same or less weight. If/when this technology is fully realized, imagine the applications for not just body armor, but armor for vehicles as well.
The researchers also mentioned the increased conductive properties of carbon nano-fibers, which could lead to armor and clothing with embedded telemetry, heating and cooling capability and even innovative Predator-like camouflaging.
But there’s a down-side my armor expert warns. When the material is impacted, it results in emissions of carbon monoxide gas and microscopic particulates that could prove toxic if inhaled. One of the researchers presenting her work at the conference admitted this was a concern, but that research into the environmental effects of such a breakdown was so-far minimal. The Washington Post had a story on this phenomenon on Wednesday, citing a study that showed much higher cancer risk in mice injected with nano fibers.
Now this doesn’t seem like much when applied to a body armor plate impact. But my buddy countered that if these things were part of vehicle armor, imagine the potentially toxic effluent if its struck by a massive IED or anti-armor round…
It’s an amazing development that could revolutionize how we think about ballistic protection. But there’s clearly still a long way to go before we can built that featherweight tank.
– Christian
Theoretically you could counter *most* toxic residue by sandwiching the nanotube plates in chemically absorbing material, even a thermic *sleeve*; when hit the kinetics would flash-heat the sleeve and locally burn off toxins. This is something already done in industry. This all would ofcourse make the stuff heavier and probably stiffer, but when used in an armored vehicle you could reduce its weight and make it really C-130 transportable.
Christian,
Any brochures or handouts regarding that presentation/tech that could be made availabe to a fan?
Regarding your armor bud, how does being encased in nanobased armor allow one to have increased strength?
Also did the presentation have anything to do with “liquid” armor or STF based armor which from my understanding was nano particles that would harden upon impact of a high velocity round?
I guess to counter any potential long term side effects of “impacted” armor, troops could use respiratory/facial protection similar to asbestos lining that would prevent/reduce exposure to those particulates.
That research doesn’t have me convinced, if you inject graphite such as that used in carbon fiber do the mice get cancer?
Even if it is a concern, I think this could be used as a last-stop in a sandwich of body armor.
Armor would not make the guy stronger, it’s just that a tank made out of Carbon Nanotubes would be hundreds of times lighter than existing armor. So a take would weigh as much as a small car but have more protection that modern battle tanks today.
The idea behind liquid armor is based around the concepts in Non-Newtonian fluid. Non-Newtonian fluids change there viscosity when shear force is applied (A missle someone trying to walk on it, etc). The idea in armor is that if you hit it hard it turns into a solid as result of the impact and resists the force. However when you are just walking around it’s just at thin layer of liquid, making it soft and easy to move in. A good example of Non-Newtonian fluid is just corn starch and water, play with it sometime if you get the chance. If you get a big pool of it you can actually walk on it.
The concern is that it might release some toxic gasses? You know what else is toxic? A bullet to the chest.
Isn’t it time to create a pro vs con chart on this one? I am thinking that a small amount of toxic gas is way better than taking a 7.62AP round through the aorta.
This light carbon stuff would very useful in fighters also! Lighter, less fuel consumption/longer range and could make a difference about surviving the explosion of a proximity warheard.
Nanotube tech will change EVERYTHING. Think of it as diamond, but harder and lighter. It carries off heat and will do away with steel and concrete. It able to be constructed at the level where distances are measured in under one hundred atoms.
But it will be a long time before you see it in anything as big as a tank. It will be in computers, medicine and then batteries. It is already in some very small exotic materials. Strings as long as a tank would also make a super battery, called an ultra capacitor proving instant energy and quick recharges. An electric tank would make it very easy to sneak up on someone providing no heat plume, much noise or infrared signature. It would be invisible to the devices that made spotting the Iraqi tanks at night so easy.
Everyone should stop dreaming about Carbon nanotube for military applications. It just won’t happen. Cost performance has always been the priority of the military, and carbon nanotube is just too expensive to produce, and could only be produced in bits. Asbestos is another problem that will be a difficulty for use in applications. I can see the headlines of the far future with GAO slamming Carbon nanotubes too expensive for armor, and that Pentagon should stick to old technology.
Regarding some of the above posts — I believe you have misunderstood him. He is not implying that the new material increases strength, but rather reduces the relative weight of the vehicle, in this case an M1A2.
So, if this is accurate the weight loss is exponential.
How long will these particles persist in the environment such as Iraq after a vehicle is hit and how dangerous will these particles be? Imagine a firefight spreading a cloud of dust over Baghdad.
Just how big a problem is this?
Sorry, but to have less weight the material must have increased inherent strength…how much weight decrease depends to what level you decide to keep the “strength” of the vehicle armor. If the armor is say twice the strenght you might only drop the weight by half. However, by keeping the armor protection properties the same as the current Abrahms you might drop the weight by 90%…I think that’s the gist of issue.
As far as it being “cost effective” that depends on the production method. A portable calculator used to cost over a thousand dollars ($1000) in the late 60’s–that’s in 1960 dollars. Now you can literally buy one for a dollar or less. Carbon essentially is one of hte most abundant and cheap mateirals on earth…think about it…the atmosphere is a few percent carbon dioxide, wood, oil, all primarily carbon and cheap. So, the energy budget and time required to make nanotubes per pound and in a specific form will drive the costs…right now it is extraordinary to say the least. But all it takes is a clever, cheap way to make long carbon nanotubes into thread or yarn and you’ve just made the world’s strongest and versatile construcion material…bigger potntial than Albert Nobel’s little invention…
Have fun.
“He is not implying that the new material increases strength, but rather reduces the relative weight of the vehicle”
Won’t go. The rap on woven nanaotubes is that they, like asbestos, lodge in the lungs when frayed and cause perpetual inflammation and mesothelioma. Since no thinking manufacturer would take on this liability risk (Asbestos liability rerun) and no insurance company would insure the manufacturer, it will not get made. At least in the United States.
Lung problems are an issue, but, no one got asbestoses from their homes. All the people that got it worked with it either in mining, processing, manufacturing, or installation. I would guess that its the same here. As long as the fibers are in a polymer matrix, you’d be OK. Obviously you need to study it to make sure it was safe of course.
The other issue is that stuff on the nano or micron scale doesn’t always translate into real world applications that need a large size. The reason that these tubes have such a high tensile strength is that they are defect free at the atomic level. Try making them long, and I am not sure it would work. Chop them up and mix them with epoxy, and you might get a great materials for a golf club head, but I am not sure it would be better than a steel plate to stop a bullet.
Y’all are forgetting something that Christian touched on: nanotubes are sensitive to heat, just like diamonds and graphite. Sure it’s super hard, but when subjected to heat, it will turn into carbon dioxide (or monoxide). So poof, your armor has now evaporated into a cloud of smoke.
As far as concerns for price are concerned, researchers have started up new reactors that have cut the price from about $150/gram to about $50/gram. Once the reactors get up and running, it is just a matter of building new ones and the price will continue to drop. As far as making long strands, they can make pieces about 3cm long now (up from about a few microns about 5 years ago). The only problem with this is that a lot of the basic research is done by foreign nationals in US universities (I am a researcher in one said universities). There is a BIG jump to go from computational (what most of them do) to making a reactor work, but all it takes is time.
As far as lung contaminates is concerned, any ceramic armor can break off during a hit and get lodged into the lungs (submicron sized particles) and cause irritation and what-not. That is how asbestos works (not just the compound). If you breath enough of small particles that your body cannot remove, it causes health issues. I would hope that our soliders would not be getting hit so much that that would happen, though. My $0.02, being someone who sees and hears about this on a weekly/biweekly interval.
~egon
>Lung problems are an issue, but, no one got >asbestoses from their homes.
Simply untrue. See http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22615791–421,00.html
It will be interesting how this all shakes out but one thing to keep in mind for tanks and artillery is that they require a certain amount of mass to handle recoil with existing recoil control systems and control of center of mass for vehicle stability. At a certain point it will become a balance between protection, weight and recoil control.
As far as the recoil goes I read an article about a recoilless system that splits the barrel as the projectile is fired. With modern guidance systems the aiming of the system is not that paramount anymore so any loss of precision would be mute.
At this point the hardest problem with carbon nanotubes is fabricating them in long enough strands to be useful outside of lab testing. There are a bunch of people working on it, but it’s a tough problem, and will take at least a few more years to solve. Regarding the recent studies regarding nanotubes and toxicity/cancer in lungs — basically they have found that anything thin/long enough (i.e. a length-thickness ratio > 7) can cause the same sort of damage in lungs as asbestos — and if the normal immune response is unable to deal with it (i.e. it can’t break it down, like it’s unable to break down asbestos) then that could lead to things like lung cancer. At this point they don’t show that this will happen, but it is something that needs to be studied more because we start coating our houses with it.
Egon,
” The only problem with this is that a lot of the basic research is done by foreign nationals in US universities“
How does that bode for the proliferation of a sensitive technology that could be instrumental to our national security?
Egon,
” The only problem with this is that a lot of the basic research is done by foreign nationals in US universities“
How does that bode for the proliferation of a sensitive technology that could be instrumental to our national security?
Armour ALWAYS has something protective, defensive about it, even when it covers the best soldiers, offensive weapons and means of transport, whole armies of them. But neither this article nor any of the posters here CONFIRM so far that this new type of armour actually fulfills its basic purpose: Has anybody already bothered yet to test the actual resistance of carbon-carbon armour plates (of various thicknesses)
1) against steel bullets fired by infantry weapons (or by criminals)
or even
2) against tungsten penetrators,
and also
3) against heat jets from hollow-charges (shells, missiles, mines, etc.)
before dancing on wildly euphorically around this new mat
To freefallingbomb:
First I want figure out the E.F.P is totally different physical penetration mechanism from
hight velocity kinetic projectiles.
I think you should review some basis knowlege about kinect and chemical energy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_rod_penetrator
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaped_charge
E.F.P in fact is Shape Charge type weapon, simple as RPG heat round but pernatrtion is much
low than that. And new anti-EFP composite armor has been deveopment and it still use
traditional material such as ceramic,fiber glass which use in chaboham armor furthermore it is
1/3 steel armor weight.
The nano-carbon material is design for counter kinetics energy not to design for Chemical Energy,
but the feature of nano-tech is to change knowned material physical&chemical properties, if they
can make carbon to diamond, they also can make new material to reduce Chemical Energy(more
effectness than ceramic/ruber), and intelligent configuration of composite structure will do both.
“1) good old-fashioned anti– MAT
Very exciting, I like it
Each group fights was brothers of one mind with leaders wise instruction, the formidable regiment is not only experiences and 2moons gold for us, is one kind of man’s honor and the China’s youth wisdom crystallization.
Do not have the duty to make that not to be able to play. You also can not make fiesta Gold.
I will buy flyff penya for you, and then you can sell the card then to trade some money to go back.
dsafasdfjasldf