Wood - Impact and erosion resistant coatings

Recent research has greatly increased the knowledge and understanding of biological materials and how their unique mechanical and physical properties arise from their structures. New fabrication techniques have allowed the modification of biological materials or the synthesis of novel materials and structures that are based on established biological principles. The aim is to use modern surface engineering techniques to develop hard and tough lightweight coatings for impact resistance and develop expandable foam to create intelligent airbags to minimise behind armour blunt trauma. These systems would be compatible lightweight body armour with impact resistant coating externally and intelligent airbags internally. This propsal will look at two novel and biomimetically inspired strategies to accommodate impact energies from erodents, foreign objects and ballistics to enhance damage tolerance of surfaces to high strain events: (1) hard and tough multi-layered CVD based coatings matched to their substrates that will dissipate impact energy through sub-critical nano/micro crack propagation and elastic responses; (2) plastically deforming and auxetic (negative Poisson's ratio) foam based coatings that foam under high-strain to act as a double crumple zone for damage resistance and self-repair and self-protection. Energy would be dissipated via elastic and plastic deformation and auxetic performance.