A photo from open sources / A sample of armor created by scientists / © Virginia tech
Fundamentally new body armor can be created on the basis of scales of the inhabitants of the underwater world. A group of scientists from different countries developed mobile armor, taking as a basis the shell structure shell mollusks (tunics). This work is described in Information publication Nature Communications.
Chitons – a variety of mollusks that live in the deep sea up to 2.5 kilometers. The shell of these creatures consists of 8 mobile plates covering the upper part of the body, and the lower part is bordered prongs that look like fish scales. These very teeth were taken for basis for creating a new armor design.
The main task that the inventors wanted to solve was to do protection at the same time strong and flexible, and modern chemical the compounds are not able to provide this. Researchers have noticed on the clam armor, which has all the necessary parameters, and decided to study their anatomy in detail.
A photo from open sources / Appearance of tunic / © Virginia Tech
To understand how these scales interact with each other mollusks, inventors conducted three-dimensional modeling. Were teeth are printed on a 3D printer of different sizes and tested with different loads. It turned out that under the external load of the flakes deform and fit snugly together while creating single impenetrable layer. What is noteworthy, this design is not loses its flexibility and mobility.
Designers changed the sizes of flakes in those places where flexibility was most important, for example, on the elbows or knees. And where the surface is flatter, large teeth were used. Such the option is almost perfect, for example, when protecting the chest, where provides a high degree of protection. Researchers are sure that existing designs cannot provide higher safety than their new development.
Previously, Polish scientists created liquid armor, in which instead traditional materials, a special fluid is used.
