|
Source:
Youqi Wang, 785-532-7181, youqi@k-state.edu
Pronouncer: Youqi is Yo-chee, Wang rhymes with fang
News release prepared by: Kay Garrett, 785-532-3238, anuenue@k-state.edu
Monday,
November 20, 2006
Project
goal: Protect lives and defeat the bullet
K-STATE ENGINEER FOCUSES ON THE MECHANICS OF BETTER BULLET PROOFING
MANHATTAN
-- Body armor with greater ballistics resistance is the aim of the
research being carried out by Youqi Wang, associate professor of
mechanical engineering at Kansas State University, with support
from two U.S. Department of Defense agencies.
The
Army Research Lab and Army Research Office awarded Wang grants totaling
$350,000 for her new approach to how next-generation ballistic-resistant
fabrics/textiles/materials might be designed. The three-year projects
are "High-speed penetration failure mechanisms of textile fabrics
and armor-grade textile composites" and "High-performance
cluster for the simulation of ballistic penetrations."
An
earlier composites design project sponsored by the Air Force brought
Wang's unique design approach to the attention of the Army agencies.
She is developing a computational model for the ballistics simulation
of a fabric given its basic physical and mechanical properties.
"The
important question for us is how can we determine the relationship
between a material's properties and the ballistic resistance of
any final product made of such material," she said.
"We're
going to attack the basic mechanics of the problem," Wang said.
"Thread is constructed of yarn; yarn has thousands of fibers;
fibers have strands; and in between you have fiber-to-fiber interactions.
Once we identify the mechanical properties, we'd like to analyze
the fabric's behavior. Ours is the first computer model to attack
this problem."
In
October, Wang installed the cluster of computational computers for
the project.
"We
purchased a small cluster in order to demonstrate that our design
approach is feasible," she said. "If we show that our
design approach is a sound one using only a few computers, we think
our design tool has a better chance of being adopted."
Now
in year two of the three-year projects, Wang has already designed
sample materials that were tested for ballistics-resistance at the
Army research facilities at Aberdeen, Md.
According
to Wang, because there's a need for better body armor for the military,
it's become extremely important to ask how protective materials
will be designed in the future. The Army wants to reduce the weight,
improve mobility and protect soldiers in combat or police officers
and others, she said.
Wang's
analysis begins with the properties of a single fiber and gains
complexity: How much force can a thread withstand? If it is woven
this way or that, what changes?
Next,
she analyzes fabric properties: What should be the proper size of
the yarn? What should be the structure of the yarn? Should it be
twisted, plain or braided? What will be better? Then comes the textile-making
process, weaving, braiding, yarn orientation. What orientation or
interlock structure will be better for a ballistic-resistant fabric?
"How
we answer the questions is going to be quite important in coming
years," Wang said.
Since
a single layer of a material will not stop a bullet, Wang said,
the goal is to design thick layers of fabric, perhaps as many as
five to 10 layers of fabric, or a 3-dimensional, woven fabric, in
such a way that a bullet's energy dissipates along the fibers and
the layers absorb the most possible energy.
"We
don't want the impact energy to stay in one direction. We want it
to go 3-dimensional," she said. "Our goal is to protect
lives and defeat the bullet."
Wang
joined K-State in 1994 and was promoted to associate professor in
2000. An Alexander von Humboldt Fellow, she earned both a master's
and doctorate in structural engineering from China's Shanghai Jiao
Tong University.
|
