Advanced Fire-Retarded Explosive Resistant Elastomers

Advanced Materials Technology, Inc responds to the Navy need to develop novel explosive resistant materials. These materials can be applied to ship structures to provide blast protection and mitigate damages from fragmentation. The proposed lightweight technology can also be used in advanced blast packaging systems to contain or mitigate blast effects of an accidentally detonated weapon. These materials must meet the Navy shipboard fire, smoke, and toxicity requirements. We will continue to use the technical approaches that have shown tremendous potential during the successful Phase I effort. Our approach will be based on the development, fabrication, and characterization of polyurea/clay (montmorillonite) nanocomposites. These novel materials will have `tunable' properties though optimizing polymer characteristics, nanoparticles dispersion, and processing parameters. We will conduct extensive fire, smoke, and toxicity evaluation, mechanical characterization at high strain rates using SHPB, and blast testing. The proposed Phase II program is designed as a comprehensive 2 ½ year effort to further develop the significant innovations demonstrated in the Phase I program. The proposed effort will further enhance and optimize polyurea nanocomposites, scale up the optimized materials, and culminate in the fabrication of prototype materials to demonstrate the readiness and maturity of our techniques.