SBIR-STTR Award

The objective of this proposal is to develop advanced lightweight facial protection system for bomb suit face shield with lightweight, excellent transparency and high ballistic resistance to reduce combat load and improve mobility for explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) soldiers and combat engineers during missions. To accomplish this goal, Frontier will develop a novel high performance lightweight transparent material technology that would meet all the weight, transparent design and ballistic resistance requirements. During the Phase I effort, Frontier will demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed concept and innovation, identify and address the technical hurdles, perform proof-of-concept validation as well as address the performance and cost issues. The success of the proposed technology will lead to high performance bomb suit face shield having superior ballistic protection and good optical quality and 30~50% weight reduction. Moreover, Frontier’s novel transparent armor material technology would allow robust face shield design to accommodate more flexibility to address the operational comfortableness and effectiveness.

Keywords:
Lightweight, Transparent, Armor, Polymer, Plastic, Face Shield, Ballistic, Optical

The objective of this SBIR Phase II proposal is to develop and demonstrate an advanced lightweight EOD face shield system that fits on the lightweight ACH helmet and meeting ballistic, optical, functional and operational requirements for Advanced Bomb Suit. During Phase I effort, Frontier has successfully demonstrated the feasibility of applying Frontier’s innovative laminated transparent armor technology for the EOD face shield applications by developing an optimized lamination process, exploring various hard coating solutions to improve the optical properties and abrasion resistance, evaluating the process parameters to improve the ballistic and optical properties of the face shield, fabricating curved face shield prototypes, and studying the ballistic performance of the curved face shields. In the proposed Phase II studies, Frontier plans to produce better quality materials, refine hard coating process, optimize EOD face shield design concepts, fabricate EOD face shield prototypes, and evaluate the EOD face shield performance meeting the ballistic, optical, functional and operation requirements. The proposed transparent armor technology and novel EOD face shield design can be used to answer the EOD’s needs to reduce the weight burden and provide better protection.

Keywords:
Eod, Faceshield, Lightweight, Ballistic, Impact, Polymer,