Novel protection mechanism of blast and impact waves by using nanoporous materials

Abstract

Recently, a novel nanoporous materials functionalized liquid (NMFL) system was developed to reduce the incident stress wave and keep it lower than the safety threshold efficiently. The inner surface of the nanopores is nonwettable to the liquid phase by applying special surface treatment. When the nanoporous particles are immersed into the liquid, due to the capillary effect, the nanopores remain empty. The blast wave front, typically with the rising time around 100 μs, can generate high local pressure which compresses the liquid into the nanopores in a few microseconds. A significant amount of the incident energy is converted into heat due to the interfacial tension. Moreover, a considerable fraction of the incident energy can be “captured” through a non-dissipative process due to the small ligament length and the effective multilayer structure with large impedance mismatch of the nanoporous structure.