High strength, light weight and flexibility have made fabrics the preferred
material for personal body armor and other impact protection applications
such as passenger airbags, turbine blade containment systems, military
and motorcycle helmets, and space debris shields. Recently, a shear thickening
fluid has been used to treat a Kevlar fabric for an additional enhancement
to the ballistic resistance of the neat fabric. Motivated by this technique of
dissipation augmentation to high strength fabrics, this research aims at investigating
the incorporation of other energy-dissipative materials into high
strength fabrics. Specifically, two magnetic field-responsive materials (a magnetorheological
fluid and Terfenol-D) have been used as a dissipation augmentation
of Kevlar fabrics. No previous work has reported either experimental or
computational research on the impact dynamics of Kevlar fabric treated with magnetorheological fluids or magnetostrictive solids. This research has investigated
both computational modeling and experimental evaluation of the impact
dynamics of textile composite armor, treated with magnetic field-responsive
materials. Fragment simulating projectile impact tests have been conducted
for the fabricated composite targets under an applied magnetic field. A computational
model based on a hybrid particle-element method has been developed,
to simulate the impact dynamics of composite fabric targets embodying magnetorheological
fluids. This model is a mesoscale multiphysics model which
can simulate impact dynamics including complex magneto-thermo-mechanical
coupling effects as well as interactions among a projectile, fabric yarns, and
magnetorheological fluid particles. Computer simulations have been performed
to validate the hybrid particle-element method against experimental results.
The computational method developed in this research has shown good agreement
with the experimental data, in terms of the ballistic limit and residual
velocity of a striking projectile. As fabric impact protection systems become
more complex, and more expensive materials are introduced, computation may
play a more important role in design. Therefore, the hybrid particle-element
model in this dissertation may contribute to the improvement of the computational
capability for virtual prototyping of fabric-interstitial fluid composites. / text
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UTEXAS/oai:repositories.lib.utexas.edu:2152/6629 |
| Date | 23 October 2009 |
| Creators | Son, Kwon Joong |
| Source Sets | University of Texas |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Format | electronic |
| Rights | Copyright is held by the author. Presentation of this material on the Libraries' web site by University Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin was made possible under a limited license grant from the author who has retained all copyrights in the works. |
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