New Shear Thickening Fluid (STF) enables flexible, comfortable armor

August 13, 2006 Since warfare began, developing armor has been a balance between the need for protection and the need for comfort, flexibility and light weight. A new nanotechnology known as Shear Thickening Fluid (STF) created by scientists at ARL and UDTC looks set to provide the next generation of armor. STF has the ability to make ballistic fabrics highly resistant to penetration when impacted by a spike, knife or bullet without compromising their weight, comfort or flexibility. The potential applications of STF include a wide range of products such as body armor, vehicle armor, helmets, gloves and bomb blankets to protect soldiers and law enforcement officials plus myriad industrial safety applications all thr way through to protective clothing for motorcyclists. When the first products become available later this year, soldiers can expect to be much safer as the liquid body armor can be used in sleeves and pants, which are not usually protected by ballistic vests because they must stay flexible.

PDF) Development of soft composite materials with improved impact resistance using Kevlar fabric and nano-silica based shear thickening fluid

Effects of bi-particle-sized shear thickening fluid on rheological behaviors and stab resistance of Kevlar fabrics - Xiayun Zhang, Ting-Ting Li, Hao-Kai Peng, Zhike Wang, Junli Huo, Ching-Wen Lou, Jia-Horng Lin, 2022

Mechanically robust triboelectric nanogenerator with a shear thickening fluid for impact monitoring - Journal of Materials Chemistry A (RSC Publishing) DOI:10.1039/D2TA01209J

shear thickening fluid impregnated protective clothing for bite resistance from animals

PDF] Conductive shear thickening gel/Kevlar wearable fabrics: A flexible body armor with mechano-electric coupling ballistic performance

Sizing up the latest trends in soldier armour - Army Technology

An SPH model to simulate the dynamic behavior of shear thickening fluids - Ozgen - 2019 - Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds - Wiley Online Library

Impact Response of Shear Thickening Fluid (STF) Treated High Strength Polymer Composites – Effect of STF Intercalation Method – topic of research paper in Materials engineering. Download scholarly article PDF and read