PhD thesis: Ageing and its effects on ballistic protection systems
Protection technologies, security, situational awareness
It is well known that composite materials used in modern armor systems, especially polymers, are prone to ageing effects. This becomes a crucial subject when ageing causes a loss in the mechanical performance, which could also cause a loss in the ballistic protection performance. In 2016 ISL started an interdisciplinary project, with different international partners, addressing the questions: how do materials age, what causes the ageing and is there a loss in performance that might result in devices no longer fullfilling the required protection standards?
Here we propose the study of different parameters (temperature, humidity, UV, etc.) that are main factors of ageing on a selection of protection materials that are commonly used. The different materials will be physically and chemically characterised in a thorough way with a traditional methodology (IR, RAMAN, SEM-EDX, Microscopy, SAX/SWAXS, XRD, etc.) but also with a very promising ISL non-destructive-approach THz-TDS/milimeter-wave FMCW technique. Furthermore, the materials will be aged artificially inhouse. The characterisation, analysis and comparison of the aged and non-aged materials will be performed. Moreover, the mechanical and ballistic performance of non-aged and aged materials will be investigated.
The work will be articulated in the following work packages:
- Establishing a characterization methodology.
- Investigation of the ageing effects caused by each parameter considered.
- Study of the ageing effects through a combination of different parameter considered.
- Classification of the ageing sensitivity/causes of the materials considered.
