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.

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

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Application of shear thickening fluids in material development - ScienceDirect

Study of dynamic compressive responses of ultra‐high molecular weight polyethylene felt impregnated with shear thickening fluid - Nayak - 2021 - Polymer Composites - Wiley Online Library

PDF) Study of mechanical property of shear thickening fluid (STF) for soft body-armor

PDF) Improving the Impact Resistance of Textile Structures by using Shear Thickening Fluids: A Review

Frontiers Use of shear thickening fluids in sport protection applications: a review

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Liquid Body Armour

Incorporation of shear thickening fluid effects into computational modelling of woven fabrics subjected to impact loading: A review - Dakshitha Weerasinghe, Damith Mohotti, Jeremy Anderson, 2020