- Title
- Fibre-reinforced composite for protection against shark bites
- Creator
- Fiedler, Thomas; Verstegen, Trent
- Relation
- Materials Vol. 13, Issue 22, no. 5065
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ma13225065
- Publisher
- MDPI AG
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2020
- Description
- The number of shark attacks resulting in fatalities and severe injuries has increased steadily over recent years. This is mainly attributed to a growing population participating in ocean sports such as swimming, diving, and surfing. To mitigate the severity of shark attacks, the current study presents a novel fibre-reinforced composite for bite protection. This material is intended for integration into neoprene wetsuits, e.g., in the form of protective pads. A suitable material must be able to withstand significant bite forces, which are concentrated within a small contact area at the tips of the shark teeth. At the same time, the material should not hinder the complex motion sequences of aquatic sports. To this end, a novel fibre-reinforced composite was created by integrating Kevlar fibres into an elastic matrix. Uni-axial testing using shark teeth replicas was conducted on a specially designed test rig to quantify the effectiveness of the novel protective material.
- Subject
- metallic syntactic foam; functionally graded; aluminum alloy; expanded perlite; mechanical properties
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1423244
- Identifier
- uon:37906
- Identifier
- ISSN:1996-1944
- Rights
- © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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