Cutting Procedures, Tensile Testing, and Ageing of Flexible Unidirectional Composite Laminates

Summary

The goal of the study was to develop protocols to prepare consistent specimens for accurate mechanical testing of high-strength aramid or ultra-high-molar-mass polyethylene-based flexible unidirectional composite laminate materials and to describe protocols for performing artificial ageing on these materials.

Abstract

Many body armor designs incorporate unidirectional (UD) laminates. UD laminates are constructed of thin (<0.05 mm) layers of high-performance yarns, where the yarns in each layer are oriented parallel to each other and held in place using binder resins and thin polymer films. The armor is constructed by stacking the unidirectional layers in different orientations. To date, only very preliminary work has been performed to characterize the ageing of the binder resins used in unidirectional laminates and the effects on their performance. For example, during the development of the conditioning protocol used in the National Institute of Justice Standard-0101.06, UD laminates showed visual signs of delamination and reductions in V₅₀, which is the velocity at which half of the projectiles are expected to perforate the armor, after ageing. A better understanding of the material property changes in UD laminates is necessary to comprehend the long-term performance of armors constructed from these materials. There are no current standards recommended for mechanically interrogating unidirectional (UD) laminate materials. This study explores methods and best practices for accurately testing the mechanical properties of these materials and proposes a new test methodology for these materials. Best practices for ageing these materials are also described.

Introduction

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) helps law enforcement and criminal justice agencies ensure that the equipment they purchase and the technologies that they use are safe, dependable, and highly effective, through a research program addressing the long-term stability of high-strength fibers used in body armor. Prior work^1,2has focused on the field failure of a body armor made from the material poly(p-phenylene-2,6-benzobisoxazole), or PBO, which led to a major revision to the National Institute of Justice’s (NIJ’s) body armor standard³. Since the relea....

Protocol

1. Cutting procedure for warp-direction specimens that are cut perpendicular to the axis of the roll

1. Identify a bolt of unidirectional material to be tested.
   NOTE: There is no warp (used to describe the direction perpendicular to the axis of the roll) and weft (used to describe the direction parallel to the axis of the roll) in the traditional textile sense, as the material used here is not woven, but these terms are borrowed for clarity.
2. Manually unroll the bolt to expose the precursor material (i.e., the identified material unwound from the bolt but still connected to the bolt).
   NOTE: The width of this bolt will become the materia....

Results

Many iterations of cutting and testing were performed to investigate several different variables. Some variables that were examined include the cutting technique and cutting instrument, the testing rate, the specimen dimension, and the grips. One critical finding was the importance of aligning the specimens with the fiber direction. Data analysis procedures (consistency analysis, Weibull techniques, outlier determination, etc.) are discussed below, as are considerations for ageing.

Discussion

Proper determination of the fiber direction is critical. The advantage of the method described in steps 1.4–1.6 of the protocol is that there is complete control over how many fibers are used to start the separation process. However, this does not mean that there is a complete control over the final separated region’s width, as the fibers are not fully parallel and can cross over each other. In the process of separating one batch of fibers, frequently, fibers neighboring those being separated will also be sep.......

Materials

List of materials used in this article

Name	Company	Catalog Number	Comments
Capstan Grips	Universal grip company	20kN wrap grips	Capstan grips used in testing
Ceramic knife	Slice	10558
Ceramic precision blade	Slice	00116
Clamp	Irwin	quick grip mini bar clamp
Confocal Microscope
Cutting Mat	Rotatrim		A0 metric self healing cutting mat
Denton Desktop sputter coater			sputter coater
FEI Helios 660 Dual Beam FIB/SEM	FEI Helios		Scanning electron microscope
Motorized rotary cutter	Chickadee
Rotary Cutter	Fiskars	49255A84
Stereo Microscope	National	DC4-456H
Straight edge	McMaster Carr	1935A74
Surgical Scalpel Blade	Sklar Instruments
Surgical Scalpel Handle	Swann Morton
Universal Test Machine	Instron	4482	Universal test machine
Utility knife	Stanley	99E