U.S. Patent Number 8,231,963 – Armor systems including coated core materials
Every Tuesday, the United States Patent and Trademark Office publishes newly granted patents. This blog post is part of a weekly series in which I pick an interesting new patent that has Idaho connections and briefly describe it.
Inventors: Henry S. Chu (Idaho Falls, ID), Thomas M. Lillo (Idaho Falls, ID), Kevin M. McHugh (Idaho Falls, ID)
Assignee: Battelle Energy Alliance, LLC (Idaho Falls, ID)
This week’s featured patent is an armor system that could be used for aircraft, armored vehicles, and body armor. The invention includes a multi-layer design, with a core material that is coated with a second material. The coating material is used to absorb some of the energy of projectiles hitting the armor.
As described in the patent, the coating layer is sprayed on the core material. In one example, the coating is about 3 mm thick. One advantage of spraying the second layer is that complex armor shapes can be created just as easily as flat armor plates.
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