- Title: UNITED KINGDOM: Armourgel - smart, high impact armour for the older generation
- Date: 25th February 2014
- Summary: LONDON, ENGLAND, UK (FEBRUARY 17, 2014) (REUTERS) DR. DANIEL PLANT, FOUNDER OF ARMOURGEL LTD, OPENING SPECIALLY CONSTRUCTED TESTING EQUIPMENT VARIOUS OF ARMOURGEL BEING TESTED AT HIGH FORCE
- Embargoed: 12th March 2014 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: United Kingdom
- Country: United Kingdom
- Topics: Health,People
- Reuters ID: LVABG6Z5KQGO4YPWTAJHE088EFKP
- Story Text: A British scientist has developed a new flexible material for use in smart clothing to be worn by the elderly, and says its widespread use could vastly reduce the numbers of elderly people suffering hip fractures when falling.
Dr Daniel Plant, who has previously helped NASA develop a range of smart textiles, has developed Armourgel, an energy absorbing smart material that stiffens on impact in the event of a fall.
"Armourgel is a synergy between two materials. One is a strain rate sensitive material. It's actually called polyborodimethylsiloxane (PBDMS), it's soft and flowable so it moves with the musculature of the body but when you impact it it momentarily goes rigid, and what we've done is combine that with another material to make these geometries here, and this material is an auxetic material. When you impact it in this direction it actually folds in on itself, so that it's got a negative Poisson's ratio, and it's the synergy of these materials that give you very good energy absorbing properties," said Plant, a researcher at Imperial College London
Auxetics are materials with a negative Poisson's ratio - named after French mathematician and physicist Simoen Poisson - a measurement of the fraction of expansion of a material divided by the fraction of compression. Armougel's own properties make it far more energy absorbent than most materials that tend to contract in two other directions perpendicular to the direction of compression.
Similar technology has been used by other manufacturers in protective clothing for motorcyclists, but its bulky nature has limited its use. Plant says Armourgel is up to four times thinner and more flexible than all similar materials, making it suitable for incorporation into everyday garments for the elderly.
As well as being lightweight, Plant says Armourgel's open structure makes it breathable, washable, and waterproof. It can also operate at temperatures of between minus 20 and 50 degrees Celcius, while its unique properties enable Armourgel to withstand repeat impacts.
"These geometries and this material help us to take repeat impact, which is quite unusual for energy absorbing materials and it allows us then to mould geometries directly onto textile, so we can end up with a very soft, very flexible material," said Plant.
Over the past six years Plant and colleagues have conducted more than 15,000 stress tests on Armourgel, which he invented in 2006. He demonstrated to Reuters the material's ability to withstand force by dropping a marble ball onto both a small section of Armourgel and onto a leading smart material used for similar purposes.
"If we take that here and we drop it on a standard material we can see that it bounces...and if we do a similar thing with a small piece of Armourgel here we can see that it doesn't bounce at all."
Hip fractures, often caused by a fall, are common among the elderly. In Britain alone 100,000 such injuries occur annually, causing severe pain and disability to individual sufferers, at an annual estimated cost to the National Health Service of 1.73 billion pounds (2.9 billion USD).
According to Armourgel, around half of those patients can no longer live independently and one in five die within a year of the fracture.
Hip fractures occur when there is a break of the upper quarter of the femur, or thigh, bone. Plant says for a healthy adult a force of around six kilonewtons is needed to break a femur, whereas for somebody with osteoporosis this can be as low as 1.9 kilonewtons, meaning a simple stumble can cause a breakage.
Some estimates suggest that by 2050 twenty percent of the world's population will be over 60 years old, making Plant's technology a very significant development for old age healthcare. The UK based Royal Academy of Engineering has recognised the commercial potential of this technology as part of its Enterprise Fellowships scheme. They recently awarded Plant a 85,000 grant (142,000 USD) to commercialise his technology.
Arnoud Jullens (Pron: Ar-Nood Yoo-Lens), head of enterprise at the Academy, says the award - one of eight handed out this year - will also allow Plant access to advice from a selection of high-powered engineering entrepreneurs acting as scheme mentors.
Jullens said its potential healthcare cost savings made Armourgel a worthy award recipient.
"This technology might reduce the amount of hip fractures in this country, which is great for the elderly, of course, but also great, for example, for the healthcare system," said Jullens.
The grant will allow Plant to spend the next 12 months working exclusively on developing a range of Armourgel smart clothing. The company has already devised such clothing for motorcyclists, but by this time next year hopes to have developed both undergarments containing Armourgel and a range of clothing with the material integrated inside close to stress points, such as the hip. He hopes the product will be ready for launch by 2016. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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