A team of researchers from North Carolina (NC) State University has created a unique metal foam armor so powerful that it turns bullets into dust upon impact. The team revealed the strength of their product in a video showing an armor-piercing bullet disintegrating upon impact with the material.
The armor is created from composite metal foams (CMFs), which are lighter than metal plating, giving them benefits that will likely see them integrated into new types of body and vehicle armor. But it doesn't stop there - these unique foams have plenty of potential uses even outside of the field of body armor, including space exploration and nuclear shipping waste transport.
For years, Afsaneh Rabiei, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at NC State University, has been developing CMFs and shedding light on their unique properties. In the video above, the super-strong composite armor is made out of Rabiei's CMFs.
The bullet in the video measures 7.62 by 63 millimeters and is an M2 armor-piercing projectile that was fired according to the standard procedures outlined by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ). Despite its armor-piercing capabilities, the metal foam armor has no difficulty destroying it.
"We could stop the bullet at a total thickness of less than an inch, while the indentation on the back was less than 8 millimeters," Rabiei said. "To put that in context, the NIJ standard allows up to 44 millimeters indentation in the back of an armor."
In addition to body armor, numerous applications can benefit from materials that are extremely light and strong, including the shipment of nuclear waste and space exploration, which require materials with ideal strength, weight and radiation protection.
Rabiei has shown that the CMF body armor is effective at shielding X-rays, gamma rays and neutron radiation, as well as demonstrating that they can withstand heat and fire twice as well as the standard metals that they are made of.
Future research will help scientists better understand the unique properties of metal foam armor and CMFs and hopefully integrate them into numerous technologies that could use the benefit of this strong, light material.
The findings were published in the July 2015 issue of the journal Composite Structures.
