Conductive shear thickening gel/Kevlar wearable fabrics: A flexible body armor with mechano-electric coupling ballistic performance

Abstract This work reported a novel conductive shear thickening gel-Kevlar fabrics (c-STG/Kevlar) body armor material which possessed both anti-impact performance and dynamic mechano-sensing behavior. Due to the excellent shear thickening effect, the c-STG/Kevlar showed a higher safeguarding property than the neat Kevlar. Under low-velocity drop tower loading, the maximum center force of c-STG/Kevlar was only 5768 N, which was nearly half of the neat Kevlar (11414 N). During the high-velocity ballistic testing, the monolayer c-STG/Kevlar sample could absorb 21.6% impact energy. The c-STG/Kevlar displayed a mechano-electric coupling character since the electrical resistance of the c-STG/Kevlar was linearly dependent on the external impacts. A possible sensing mechanism was proposed and it was found that the impact damages could be evaluated by the resistance variation. Finally, an in situ impact-sensing helmet was obtained by using c-STG/Kevlar, which indicated that the above smart fabrics had wide potential in next generation body armor materials and wearable devices.