Non-Newtonian Fluids: Understanding Strength for Armor Experiments

[tkav1980]

Hello,
It's been some time since I've visited and the nature of my question could cover engineering, physics or chemistry so I'm unsure where exactly to post it. I hope here is ok.

I don't have the education to understand any published research on the topic and I hope someone here can provide a relatively simple answer.

I'm looking for information on non Newtonian fluids and what they could be made from that would have much higher strength than cornstarch and water. The purpose is to perform a bit of an experiment where the fluid would be placed between 2 plates of different steels, one hardned and one softer to find out what capability a dragon scale style body armor made this way would have against various rounds.

I know there was a polish company back in 2015 developing this type of soft armor but the patented compound they developed is not available for sale.

This is for a video I'm shooting to see if something like this would work as well as level 3 and 3A manufactured armor plates and how big/thick it would need to be made to provide the same level of protection.

Thanks.

 

[Baluncore]

I know there was a polish company back in 2015 developing this type of soft armor but the patented compound they developed is not available for sale.

Do you have a link to a copy of that patent, or other patents in the field?

 

[tkav1980]

Do you have a link to a copy of that patent, or other patents in the field?

I don't. I found several articles referencing it.
https://www.popsci.com/poland-develops-bulletproof-liquid-armor/
I'm not sure this is the same thing but google was able to provide this link. it looks similar to what Moratex produced from the information I could find.
https://patents.google.com/patent/US7226878B2/en
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259899898_SHEAR_THICKENING_FLUIDS_BASED_ON_NANOSIZED_SILICA_SUSPENSIONS_FOR_ADVANCED_BODY_ARMOUR

There's hundreds of videos on homemade body armor and even attempts at using oobleck but I haven't seen anyone attempt it with any other sheer thickening fluids. I thought it would make for an interesting video.

 

[jrmichler]

Patents are always a good place to look for the type of information you are looking for. Now that you have one patent, you can search the patents referenced by that patent, and the patents that reference that patent. Several of those patents mention shear thickening fluids in their titles, others in the body of the patent. Read those carefully because they should have recipes for the fluids.

If you have a company name, you can search for patents assigned to that company. I like to use the U.S. Patent Office site for those searches: https://patft.uspto.gov/. It's an excellent site, but you need to be careful because it is a pure Boolean search.