Effect of polymer microsphere incorporation on impact performance of STF cotton fabric composite

Abstract

Liquid body armor system is recently being used compared to conventional body armor due to its lightweight, highly flexibility and reduced layered fabric. Shear thickening fluid (STF) system comprising of Polymer Microsphere (PMS) and solvent media are exploited in this study. Polymer Microsphere (eg: PMS) in solvent media varies with viscosity upon different PMS composition with and without surfactant. Fabrication of STF fabric system using Cotton laminate were performed using hand lay up with fixed areal density of 40% PMS content. Impact performance was evaluated using knife pendulum impact tester. Impact strength was found to increase with incorporation of STF system. STF addition significantly improves stab resistance of fabric. There were improvements of impact energy absorption for cotton fabric at different volume of STF used with 3 layers. For the three layer systems, impact performance showed improvement of 27.62% using 4ml of STF compared to use of 8ml of STF (12.44% impact improvement). For Cotton STF fabric composite, the effectiveness of the penetration was raised upon higher fabric layers. Overall, the STF-Cotton fabric composite are totally failure during testing, because of the cotton fabric is a fabric, which has very low strength. The addition of STF onto the cotton fabric system will not make the fabric becomes highly impact resistance.