Graphene Composites (GC) has announced a research and development partnership with Advanced Blast & Ballistic Systems (ABBS), a leading developer of active systems for protecting armored vehicles from mine and IED blasts.
The partnership will focus on the use of GC’s nanomaterials engineering technologies particularly GC Shield® technology to improve blast and ballistic protection performance of its systems, with testing and FEA modelling which explores the use of graphene enhanced materials as a part of its continued development of the underbelly blast plate.
This is a unique opportunity for us to extend our proven GC Shield technology to deliver major performance enhancements to existing protection solutions where the combination of strength, lightness and resilience are all required said Sandy Chen, GC CEO & Co-Founder. Graphene is an incredible material but it’s the nanomaterials engineering expertise that makes it actually work in critical real-world applications.
Roger Sloman, Founder and Managing Director, said ABBS is delighted to be working with the GC Team to explore how their graphene technology can contribute to increased performance of the ABBS product range, and especially in the carbon fiber reinforced belly plate (CFRB) designs which it has recently been developing under a UK MOD DSTL/DASA contract. A weight reduction up to 30% might be possible compared to a standard ballistic steel design.
ABBS has routine contacts with the US Army Ground Vehicle Systems Centre in Detroit and has Pentagon interest in its ground-breaking VGAM (Vehicle Global Acceleration Mitigation) system which uses novel ultrafast-acting Linear Rocket Motors to counteract the lifting forces from even large IED’s to keep the vehicle on the ground and protect the occupants from disabling or even fatal spinal acceleration injuries.
