>
"I Hope They See This Segment" - Elon Musk Reveals He and Team Trump Have Identified...
BREAKING: Several Counties in Wisconsin Run Out of Ballots During Hotly Contested Supreme Court Race
Large Overnight Israeli Airstrike On Beirut Kills Hezbollah Official & Bystanders
"There Will Be No Negotiating": Tesla Firebombing Suspect Hit With Federal Charges,...
Watch the Jetson Personal Air Vehicle take flight, then order your own
Microneedles extract harmful cells, deliver drugs into chronic wounds
SpaceX Gigabay Will Help Increase Starship Production to Goal of 365 Ships Per Year
Nearly 100% of bacterial infections can now be identified in under 3 hours
World's first long-life sodium-ion power bank launched
3D-Printed Gun Components - Part 1, by M.B.
2 MW Nuclear Fusion Propulsion in Orbit Demo of Components in 2027
FCC Allows SpaceX Starlink Direct to Cellphone Power for 4G/5G Speeds
The stuff could make for helmets, armor and vehicle parts that are lighter, stronger and, importantly, reusable.
The key to the new material is what are known as liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs). These are networks of elastic polymers in a liquid crystalline phase that give them a useful combination of elasticity and stability. LCEs are normally used to make actuators and artificial muscles for robotics, but for the new study the researchers investigated the material's ability to absorb energy.
The team created materials that consisted of tilted beams of LCE, sandwiched between stiff supporting structures. This basic unit was repeated over the material in multiple layers, so that they would buckle at different rates on impact, dissipating the energy effectively.
In a series of experiments, the team tested how well the material could withstand impacts of different masses at different speeds. The materials were struck by objects weighing between 4 and 15 lb (1.8 and 6.8 kg) at speeds of up to 22 mph (35.4 km/h) and, sure enough, they held up.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the material performed better with more layers of the cells. A structure with four layers, for example, had almost double the energy absorption density of a single-layer structure.
While the materials were so far only tested with impacts up to 22 mph, the team says that they should be able to absorb impacts at higher speeds as well.
The researchers say that the material could be used to improve the safety of helmets, body armor, car bumpers and other parts of vehicles and aircraft, effectively dissipating energy from impacts while remaining lightweight.