Future soldiers could one day drive humvee-like vehicles featuring ballistic armor manufactured from an advanced material created in the University materials science and engineering department.
The Charlottesville-based company Cellular Materials International, Inc., whose clients include the Defense Advanced Research Program Agency, Army research laboratories, defense contracting company Lockheed Martin and Boeing, purchased the rights to a University-owned patent for the invention developed by Prof. Haydn Wadley of the materials science and engineering department. CMI, according to the company's Web site, was established specifically to make use of such University research.
According to Matthew Terry, CMI manager of programs and administration, Wadley and his student advisees developed a "lightweight sandwich structure material," which consists of "two solid sheets separated by some kind of space structure like a honeycomb."
Wadley's research began about 10 years ago with the help of various grants and assistants, Terry said.
"It's the grad students in the group that really do the work," Wadley said. "They're absolutely essential to what we do here."
The material Wadley and his students created is very durable, lending itself to numerous design possibilities. Potential uses for the material include blast-resistant armor, as well as "a number of applications where you're looking to minimize the weight of your structure without compromising its mechanical integrity," as in aerospace engineering, Terry said. The material could also be used as a jet blast deflector, a piece of equipment on aircraft carriers that protects the ship's crew from hot gases during takeoff, he added.
Currently, though, CMI is working with the U.S. Army to develop a new armor concept using the University-developed material for a next-generation, humvee-like vehicle known as the Mine Resistant Armor Protected vehicle. Terry added that "these vehicles are designed to essentially replace the humvee as troop carriers for next-generation vehicles."
CMI will have to pay royalties to the University for use of the patent, according to Chris Harris, University Patent Foundation senior licensing manager.
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