Improved Body Armor

This project breaks down the weight, ballistic performance as measured by three levels of threat protection and damage tolerance, and cost barriers for state-of-the-art small arms protective insert (SAPI) body armor. HPMG proposes to extend the work performed in Phase I to incorporate low cost ceramic and carbon fibers into proprietary metal matrix composites. As a result, HPMG proposes to demonstrate and rapidly commercialize damage tolerant, multi-hit protective inserts, at about four pounds per square foot, with a target cost substantially less than the current boron carbide state of the art body armor. In Phase I of this project, HPMG explored imbedding wires, fibers, and metal rods into metal matrix composite preforms to impart damage tolerance and higher ballistic performance to already proven lightweight armor. As a result of work accomplished in Phase I and earlier internal research at HPMG, we now propose to focus Phase II efforts on imbedding lower cost ceramic and carbon fibers to reduce overall armor cost and demonstrate damage tolerant SAPI at less than 4.0 psf.