Railgun Application for High Energy Impact Testing of Nano-Reinforced Kevlar-Based Composite Materials

An advanced electromagnetic accelerator, called railgun, has been assembled and tuned in order to perform high energy impact test on layered structures. Different types of layered composite materials have been manufactured and characterized in terms of energy absorbing capability upon impact of metallic bullets fired at high velocity. The composite materials under testing are manufactured by integrating several layers of Kevlar fabric and carbon fiber ply within a polymeric matrix reinforced by carbon nanotubes at 1% of weight percentage. The experimental results show that the railgun-device is a good candidate to perform impact testing of materials in the space debris energy range, and that carbon nanotubes may enhance, when suitably coupled to the composite's matrix, the excellent antiballistic properties of the Kevlar fabrics.