Innovative High Performance Lightweight Transparent Armors

The continuing terrorist attacks on U.S. forces deployed in Iraq have created an urgent need for lightweight transparent armor systems capable to provide a greater extent of protection to the soldiers against emerging threats. However, there is a substantial performance gap in the ballistic impact resistance of existing monolithic polymer transparent materials. An important goal of transparent armor development is reducing the overall weight and thickness of the armor without reducing its protective properties to improved survivability and tactical mobility for the individual soldier. The goal of this Phase I project is to develop high-performance, lightweight transparent armor materials that have ballistic impact resistance relative to present fiber reinforced polymer composite armor to substantially increase the level of eye and face ballistic protection available to soldiers, without increasing equipment weight. Frontier seeks to identify and advance the processing, and materials required to improve performance in transparent materials applications. During the Phase I effort, Frontier will demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed innovation to identify material, optimize the transparent armor designs using computational modeling , and develop the processing techniques to rapid scale up and transition of the material technology to commercial production.