A Highly Damped, High strength, Puncture-resistant Fabric for Multi-threat Protective Uniforms

Proposed is an investigation into the use of highly flexible and extremely strong, superelastic, Nitinol shape memory alloy fibers as a means of dramatically increasing the damping properties in and improving cutting and puncture resistance of organic fiber based protective clothing fabrics. The Nitinol fibers are to be used as reinforcement for organic fiber fabrics made from nylon, aramid, polyethylene, polypropylene and other such fibers at low volume fractions to enhance the cut and puncture resistance of the fabrics. Additionally, the Nitinol fibers would be integrated in such a fashion that when the fabric is subjected to heavy vibrational loads, the fibers will cycle through Nitinol's two phase transitions absorbing large amounts of the energy. These Nitinol enhanced fabrics will primarily benefit workers exposed to high-energy airborne vibrations. The increased cutting strength and puncture resistance of the fabric will benefit those in the in the glass-handling, wood-cutting, meat-packing, and metal working industries among others. Because Nitinol's superelastic, they would also benefit from the improved flexibility that the Nitinol would give the protective clothing over present fabrics used. Integrating this new composite fabric into protective gloves for workers using vibrating equipment is particularly viewed as having high potential for commercial development.