Blast-Proof Fabric Resists Multiple Explosions

An anonymous reader tips a Gizmodo story on a fabric whose properties are counterintuitive, to say the least of it. "Zetix is a fabric so strong it will resist multiple car bomb blasts without breaking. It absorbs and disperses the energy from explosions... it can be used in body armor, window covering, military tents, and hurricane defenses... [and] it can be used as medical sutures that won't damage body tissue. All of this is thanks to a property that apparently defies the laws of physics: helical-auxetics, objects that actually get fatter the more you stretch them. The concept makes my head want to explode, but when you see it in action it actually makes sense."

Mind the label

[ackthpt (218170)]

and] it can be used as medical sutures that won't damage body tissue.

Sutures necessary from the failure of the cloth?

Read the label "Resists, not Proof!"
"D'oh!"
"At least we can use the remainder of your suit to stitch you up!"

The concept makes my head want to explode, but when you see it in action it actually makes sense.

You should wear a hat made of this material, if not for you, than for those around you.

"I wear fashions from Yves St. Rongbad, in case anything around me asplode!"

Re:Mind the label

[crakbone (860662)]

Now how do we get clothes and backpacks made out of this stuff to suicide bombers?

I claim prior art

[spun (1352)]

This is hardly new. I've had a something that gets fatter the more you stretch it for as long as I can remember.

Re:Mind the label

[Gilmoure (18428)]

Women aren't any fun unless they're at least a size 12.

No miracles, no defying the laws of physics

[Besna (1175279)]

We should look at it for what it is. For one thing, this won't do anything for bullets (or swords). Another defensive tool, which is a great thing. Offense has been winning out way too much in the race.

Re:No miracles, no defying the laws of physics

[BlueStraggler (765543)]

this won't do anything for bullets (or swords)

Good news for pirates, then!

More seriously, I think it will work for bullets, since bullets burst fabrics by stretching them to the point of failure (and bullet-proof fabrics like Kevlar work by having a high tensile strength). The only question becomes how far does the bullet have to stretch the fabric until the strength rises enough to stop it? More than a couple of inches, and the bullet is into your internal organs anyway, so you have to reduce the looseness and flexibility of the fabric to prevent that from happening. The most obvious way to do that is the same way you do it for conventional bullet-proof vests: by adding hard plates or other rigid materials into the vest. The difference here is you might be able to use light materials that are themselves not bullet-proof (eg. wood, foam). The bullet could puncture these materials easily, but in dragging the material into the resulting bullet hole, the stretch factor would rise very rapidly and the fabric would suddenly become very strong.

Re:No miracles, no defying the laws of physics

[Jarjarthejedi (996957)]

Okay, raise your hand if you think the concept of Styrofoam armor that actually stops bullets is pure awesome.

*Raises Hand*

Fat pants

[FalconZero (607567)]

According the material on the companies web site (auxetix [auxetix.com]) one of the applications is for a fabric that changes colour as it's stretched (specifically for cargo webbing). But one application which would be much cooler (and useful for a fair portion of the slashdot crowd) is pants made out of this stuff - They'd change colour to tell you when you've eaten too many pies.

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[ackthpt (218170)]

They'd change colour to tell you when you've eaten too many pies.

At last! We could find who has eaten all the pies .. the fat bastard.

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[N8F8 (4562)]

Or seen a girl you find attractive.

Re:Fat pants

[Minwee (522556)]

Or next year's MacBooks.

Think about who you're talking to.

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[bkr1_2k (237627)]

Or you were surrounded by attractive women. No thanks. I like to keep my stiffy a secret sometimes.

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[cs668 (89484)]

Or when your dick gets hard!!! That would actually be fun color changing condoms.

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[jacksonj04 (800021)]

As any fool doth know, the condom goes on the erect penis, not on a flaccid one!

This has been a public service announcement.

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[jacksonj04 (800021)]

I was sorely tempted, I honestly was.

Also: Informative? I thought it was basic knowledge!

Silly putty

[techpawn (969834)]

objects that actually get fatter the more you stretch them. The concept makes my head want to explode, but when you see it in action it actually makes sense.

what like a cartoon character on silly putty? They get fatter as I stretch it...

Luckily..

[Cajun Hell (725246)]

The concept makes my head want to explode

..we now know how to prevent that.

I'm confused.

[Gigiya (1022729)]

From TFA:

The fabrics can ... be deployed in containment systems, military tents, ballistic mosquito nets and body armor, a $2 billionpret-a-porter market.

What?

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[UncleTogie (1004853)]

It's just the countermeasure against the Ballistic Mosquito Gun 3000...

...nothing to see here, move along!

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[Yetihehe (971185)]

In hot humid climates mosquitos often go ballistic to pierce through nets. Often first mosquito doesn't survive it, but it is to preserve the whole species.

Re:I'm confused.

[cephyn (461066)]

It's to protect against ICBMs - you know, Inter-Continental Ballistic Mosquitoes. All the major superpowers have them.

What's so confusing about that?

They decided to name it Zetix since

[Provocateur (133110)]

'iddqd' was unpronounceable and make it less marketable except to some Eastern Bloc countries

won't protect the contents

[petes_PoV (912422)]

Just because the material doesn't break or tear, doen't mean that whatever is inside it won't. If you make body armour from it, you could still get your head blown off. Likewise if you make a tent from it, any explosion outside could still damage or kill anyone inside, simply because the material is flexible and will bend when hit by shrapnel.

The best thing to do with it would be to make bags that you can use to contain an explosive device rather than try to protect people with it.

Afterthought: if it's s

Re:

[ChronoReverse (858838)]

With scissors I'd presume. Slow moving sharp edges should cut through this easily.

Hopefully bullets and shrapnel, being fast moving, won't.

Re:won't protect the contents

[a whoabot (706122)]

"The slow blade penetrates the shield."

Re:

[idontgno (624372)]

In a world of slow-moving shield-fighters, the man with the lasgun is dead, along with anyone within a several-kilometer radius. Pseudo-atomic fusion detonations are bad that way.

Garbage

[spleen_blender (949762)]

"All of this is thanks to a property that apparently defies the laws of physics"

These kind of statements are so frustrating to me...

Brand name "Mithril"

[by Anonymous Coward]

Just something we're kicking around at the office. It has a nice "ring" to it, don't you think?

if this were a towel

[joeytmann (664434)]

I would never leave home without it.

Video of Auxetic material

[jupitersspot (1163231)]

Nice video showing and explaining the phenomenon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdkYuLsT7Sc [youtube.com]

Looking forward to civilian applications of this..

[ndykman (659315)]

I'd be thrilled to have a motorcycle jacket and armour made better by this stuff.

Re:Looking forward to civilian applications of thi

[NiteShaed (315799)]

If your motorcycles explode on a regular basis, you may want to reconsider servicing them yourself......

"Defies the laws of physics"

[cephyn (461066)]

I really hate that saying. It makes it sound like physics is a religion, where scientists have decided "that's how things work, and that's that" - which is ridiculous. If something "defies" physics, then the laws of physics change to accommodate reality. That's how science works - it comes about based on observation.

Nothing can defy the laws of physics - because physics describes how things work.

sometime in the 24th century

[superwiz (655733)]

Drapes up, captain?

Re:Is there an SI-unit?

[by Anonymous Coward]

Corleones?

Re:Is there an SI-unit?

[athakur999 (44340)]

It is based on the amount of reward you are promised in the afterlife for using the car bomb. A "standard" car blast has a strength of 7 dekavirgins.

Re:Is there an SI-unit?

[by Anonymous Coward]

More revisionist metric nonsense.

The "standard" car blast is called the akar. One akar is equal to six fekar, and one fekar is equal to twelve virgins. These are long standing traditional measures which are much more natural when planning real attacks, by the way... some of us actually do stuff instead of just talking about it. By all rights, even when using your annoying metric system, a "standard" car blast would be 7.2 of your dekavirgins. However the Car Bomb Unit Naming Institute is overrun by weak-willed idiots who have never blown themselves up to smite their enemy in their lives, and have chosen to spit on the face of this holy tradition by rounding the number to a more "convenient" value. As if any of these guys has ever worn an explosive belt or carried a dead-man's switch. It makes me sick, I tell you.

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[PrescriptionWarning (932687)]

now if only we can get all suicide bombers to wear this material over the bomb vest....

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[ecklesweb (713901)]

Saw another kind of body armor on TV called Dragon Skin [pinnaclearmor.com] that's made of interlinked disks that also claim to spread the impact. Took armor piercing rifle rounds without penetration. They put a dummy wearing it on top of a fragmentation grenade and blew it up with no penetration through the vest. Crazy stuff.

Re:Energy dissipation

[ecklesweb (713901)]

Oh yeah, video of the dragon skin grenade test here [youtube.com]

Sorry, wrong link..

[msimm (580077)]

I think you mean this [youtube.com] video.

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[pclminion (145572)]

Force times distance is WORK, not energy. Can you explain the energy of a photon in terms of "force times distance?" Nope.

What matters in this application isn't energy, but momentum. If the fabric could dissipate ALL the kinetic energy of an explosion/bullet as heat, that would be remarkable but not enough. You can't "dissipate" momentum, regardless of what crazy cool materials you come up with.

In the case of a blast shield covering a window, the strength of the fabric against tearing will allow it to t

Re:Energy dissipation

[gurps_npc (621217)]

Some people here simply do not understand how armor works. So they think "this thing won't protect you, because it doesn't stop the energy/pressure, it just doesn't break".

Armor is not just a single layer of stuff, it is multiple layers. Yes, this stuff by itself is not worth much as armor, but layer it on top of other thigns, and you got something special.

Each layer stops something else. This layer does not break, so it stops penetration. Make a cell structure of this, fill it with something else, like say SAND, and that pressure wave you were so worried about becomes contained. Two layers of a cell structure like this, with sand in between them, and the entire explosive kinetic energy is contained, converted to heat, deflect out, or otherwise dealt with.

Re:Energy dissipation

[Don853 (978535)]

A 160 grain bullet fired from a 30 caliber rifle at 3000 fps (those are rough numbers, and on the high side) has the same momentum as a 175lb man traveling at .4 fps. Momentum is not an issue.

Re:Energy dissipation

[Em Adespoton (792954)]

OK, now imagine it stretched over titanium-frame or carbon-nanotube-frame body armor. The trick is to create some tension on the material and some distance between it and the body. You need a frame that can take the stresses of the material and the impacts, and combine that with the stopping power of the material.

Personally though, I'd rather see something like this used in car parts (bumpers, convertible roofs, tires, etc).

you just proved your own stupidity

[circletimessquare (444983)]

a few things your intellect hasn't realized yet:

1. menace comes from smart and ill-intentioned people as well as just dumb people
2. that tools of war are used by men engaging the defense from those with bad intentions just as much as it is used by those with bad intentions

thought experiment for you: a lunatic comes into town with a samurai sword and starts slashing people. reference recent news from omaha nnebraska if you think this scenario is not a constant danger throughout human existence

1. in society #1, the people calmly stand there, explaining to him, much in your line of thought, of the stupidity of what he is doing. shortly before their jugulars are slashed. the whole town is wiped out. also wiped out with them, is the philosophy of nonviolence

2. in society #2, as soon as the guy raises his sword, a common townsfolk raises his sword, and the only blood spilled is that of the lunatic. the philosophy of prudent use of arms survives

interestingly enough, the philosophy of nonviolence results in more bloodletting and death (scenario #1). paradoxical, but true

darwinistically speaking, nonviolence is a path to extinction. it sounds really nice, but in the reality of human nature and how human nature plays out, you must, UNFORTUNATELY (see, no warmongering here) have constant use of arms close by, to guard from those with bad intent. you will never stop the creation of people with bad intent in this world. if you respect free will, you respect that every once in awhile, someone somewhere will make a horrible choice, and you must guard against that. i suppose you could disallow free will. that's a certain path to nonviolence: a superfascist state. is that superior in your mind than a free but armed society?

peace in this world is not maintained by an absence of armament, peace in this world is maintained by a balance of armament, a constant tension, a potential that is released to restore the balance of peace when an imbalance in fair action occurs by bad intentioned individuals in public settings

Society #3

[PIPBoy3000 (619296)]

Society #3 has done a good job locking up the lunatics as well as policing the borders to make sure "insane" societies don't attack. Because weapons of mass destruction are difficult to get, the few insane individuals who aren't treated or locked up can do little damage. Rates of death from violent means far below that of natural causes, such as cancer, accidents, and heart disease. This allows the society to out compete the neighboring violet countries, due to extended lifespans, greater time for educat

Re:

[Frantactical Fruke (226841)]

...reference recent news from omaha nnebraska if you think this scenario is not a constant danger throughout human existence...

The news media only report what is sensational and untypical. And yet the world is full of people who think the news describe the world as it is. You might just as well base your world view on the Guinness Book of World Records.

Most people throughout history have lived their lives in peace, untouched by violence. I know I have. We don't get mentioned in history or in the news, because we are boring. Violence is the exception, not the rule of human existence. Otherwise, we would still be apes squabbling i

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[spikedvodka (188722)]

This may not be useful for your everyday Joe on the street, but it'll probably be used as another layer for the Nomex bomb suits they already wear while disarming a bomb.

You mean those suits that all they're good for is to make the remains more identifiable...

If you're sitting on top of a bomb when it goes off, I don't care what you're wearing... you're toast. If I have to disarm a bomb... I'm either going to succeed, fail & buy the farm, or know I'm going to fail, and walk away. don't give me a suit that keeps me from running if I have to, give me my dykes, a voltmeter, a pair of good running shoes, and a black T-Shirt with big yellow letters:
Bomd Squad Technician - I

Re:

[Headw1nd (829599)]

Penny Arcade? Whatever, gramps.