Stabbing resistance of body armour panels impregnated with shear thickening fluid

This paper presents an investigation on the use of shear thickening fluid (STF) to improve stabbing resistance of soft ballistic body armour. STFs were produced from polyethylene glycol and silica nanoparticles. The effects of silica nanoparticle sizes and silica nanoparticle weight fraction were studied and STFs made with the different compositions were used to impregnate the Twaron® woven fabrics. Systemic investigations into rheological behaviour of STF were carried out experimentally on STFs with different compositions. STF impregnated woven fabric panels were created and tested for stabbing resistance. Stabbing impact tests were conducted on 6 different types of STF impregnated fabric panels against 2 untreated fabric panels, and the results were studied against the benchmark fabrics without STF impregnation. Based on the same number of layers of fabric, the STF impregnation improves the stabbing resistance notably. For same panel areal density, the STF impregnated panels outperform the untreated fabric panel. The results of this research indicate the possibility of lighter ballistic panel materials for higher stabbing protection. It was also found that higher nanoparticle weight fraction and larger nanoparticle size of silica leads to better stabbing resistance performance among the STF impregnated panels.