SBIR-STTR Award

In expeditionary environments, shelters such as the Tent Expandable Modular PERsonnel (TEMPER) tent continue to be the primary means of housing command, communications and administrative functions and for the ‘hotel’ accommodation of our soldiers. In this same environment the increased occurrence of mortar and rocket attacks has significantly raised the threat to our troops from blast and fragmentation. Although sandbags, concrete barriers, and other defense walls have traditionally provided added ballistic protection for our troops, overhead protection from indirect fire for these ‘soft’ shelters has always been lacking. The army is now pursuing is a method to provide this additional overhead protection plus offer the stand-off initiation of RPGs in a configuration applicable to soft shelters. At the completion of the Phase I effort, TPI will have designed an Overheard Threat Protection (OTP) frame structural system to meet the U.S. Army requirements to provide force protection to a wide range of soft walled shelter systems. We will have completed Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and provided analysis of the overpressure impulse loading and static loading of the OTP system. In addition, we will have fabricated a 1:3 scale proof-of-concept model of the OTP system demonstrating the protection/coverage possibilities and deployability characteristics.

Keywords:
Support Structure, Shelter, Impulse Dissipation, Force Protection, Overhead Protection

The Over Head Threat Protection system developed previously minimizes the structural load seen by the support frame by having a pre-detonation (Pre-Det) screen set off the incoming round at a 5-ft distance from the fragmentation catch panels. This approach allows for a lighter weight ballistic panel solution than would be required without a pre-det layer. The problem with the current design is that the pre-det layer is made from -in thick plywood. Installing the plywood layer at a 5-ft standoff on top of a large structure proved difficult and time consuming. It is this component of the design which needs to be modified/improved. Recent R&D work shows a potential capability to develop a pre-det screen made from a high strength fabric. If the pre-det screen could be switched to fabric from -in plywood, the complexity of the process and set up time for the OTP structure, and the level of mechanical assistance needed would be drastically reduced while the risk to the assembly team incurred by the requirement to maneuver large heavy rigid panels in the air would be obviated. The packed volume and weight of the fabric would also be significantly less than the woodendesign.

Keywords:
Support Structure, Shelter, Impulse Dissipation, Force Protection, Overhead Protection