Funding Agency: U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) / U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (RDECOM)
Partners: CCM, University of Pittsburgh
In collaboration with ARL/RDECOM and the University of Pittsburgh, CCM has established fundamental understanding of processing-microstructure-performance relationships for improving performance of ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene fibers and sheets. Research includes the role of high pressure consolidation on porosity reduction and fiber degradation, atomistic scale and finite element modeling of UHMWP fibril and fbirl arrays incorporating a range of defects, characterization methods for measuring effects of high pressure on tensile strength as well as tooling for high pressure panel fabrication of prototypes for validation.