SBIR-STTR Award

There is a great need and opportunity to develop lower cost manufacturing process for ceramic tile-based composite armor system for military tactical vehicles. The threat levels encountered by the military tactical vehicles, particularly due to the Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) pose an ever-increasing need for more lightweight and effective vehicle armor system at an affordable cost. A low-cost composite ceramic armor system will enable wider adoption of lightweight armor in military tactical vehicles, thus providing increased mission capability and improved mobility and survivability to our war-fighters. NexGen Composites, Fiber-Tech Industries and CerCo have collaborated to develop a novel, low-cost manufacturing process for ceramic tile-based composite armor system for military tactical vehicles. Based on the preliminary projections, it is estimated that this new manufacturing process, called NexArmor process, can potentially reduce the cost of the ceramic composite armor system by about 50 % and can reduce the manufacturing cycle-time by about 75% compared to the current composite armor manufacturing process. This new agile and flexible NexArmor manufacturing process with significantly lower cycle time will also greatly increase the surge production capability to respond in a short turn-around time.

"The U.S. military tactical vehicles currently use a ceramic tile based composite armor system in situations where a lightweight armor system is desired to provide protection against blast fragments and ballistic projectiles while maintaining adequate mobility and survivability. However, the current ceramic tile based composite armor system, which are generally manufactured using Vacuum Assisted Resin Transfer Molding (VARTM) process, is expensive due to the labor intensive manufacturing processes, high tooling cost and relatively low throughput. NexGen Composites, in collaboration with Fiber-Tech Industries, Owens Corning and the University of Dayton, plans to continue the Phase I effort to develop a novel, low-cost manufacturing process for ceramic tile-based composite armor system for military tactical vehicles. Based on the preliminary projections, it is estimated that this new manufacturing process can reduce the manufacturing cycle-time by about 75% compared to the current composite armor manufacturing process and reduce costs to level which make composite-ceramic armor solutions practical and cost-effective for the US Army."