Transformer Fabric
An international team of scientists has developed a protective transformer fabric that can change its internal structure. It resembles an old chain mail-the particles of the material are located close to each other, which allows you to block external mechanical influences.
The developers are scientists from Singapore's Nanyang and California Technological Universities. Associate Professor Wang Yifan said that the team of his colleagues was really inspired to create the material by the device of an ancient protective chain mail. The individual elements of the octahedron-shaped fabric are printed on a 3D printer made of nylon and combined into a chain-mail structure. The resulting material is encapsulated in a plastic shell and sealed by vacuum. Such a method increases the density of packed elements and allows the particles to intensively contact each other, as a result of which the rigidity of the structure increases by 25 times. The tests gave the following results. The fabric was able to hold a load of 1.5 kg or 50 times its own weight when pulling it on a flat object. In the initial state, the fabric structure was deformed by 26 mm when a small steel ball was dropped on it. The material threw the ball due to the transition of the structure from a soft state to a hard one, which deformed it by only 3 mm. In subsequent experiments, nylon was replaced with aluminum, as a result of which the stiffness of the material became much higher than in the case of nylon. At the same time, nylon and aluminum have the same characteristics of softness. Scientists believe that the metal version is suitable for the manufacture of bulletproof vests, exoskeletons and adaptive medical tires that change the stiffness parameters as bone tissue is restored.
