The investigation and fabrication of novel ballistic composites with checkerboard-shaped lay-up design to improve ballistic performances

Abstract

High-performance and lightweight ballistic composites prepared through layer-by-layer lay-up of matrix and fabric have attracted significant interest. However, the traditional full-coverage lay-up design constrains the energy absorption of the composites during ballistic impact. Therefore, novel ballistic composites configured with checkerboard-shaped lay-up design were studied, using checkerboard-shaped polycarbonate (PC) films and aramid plain-woven fabrics. The effect of the size and cross-layered distribution of the checkerboard-shaped PC films was investigated. Compared with the full-coverage lay-up design, the checkerboard-shaped lay-up design can effectively improve the ballistic performances. For checkerboard-shaped lay-up design ballistic composites, the ballistic performances exhibited minor variation when impacting PC regions but gradually increased with the size of the fabric regions when impacting aramid fabric regions. The ballistic performances of interval cross-layered checkerboard-shaped PC films also increased with the number of interval layers. When impacting PC regions, the primary ballistic mechanisms were compression/shear and shear/tensile failures; however, when delamination and stress waves propagated into the regions without PC films, the checkerboard lay-up design allowing for effective energy absorption through tensile failure by fabrics. When impacting aramid fabric regions, the primary ballistic mechanisms were shear/tensile failure and tensile failure. However, when the size of aramid fabric region was insufficient, the near PC region can restrict transverse deformation of the fabrics, which did not benefit the ballistic performances.