Numerical modeling of fabrics treated with multi-phase shear thickening fluids under high velocity impacts

Shear Thickening Fluid (STF) treatments provide an additional energy absorption capacity for the textiles subjected to high velocity impacts. The utilization of STF in the protective systems has been accelerated in the last decade and there are now a growing number of studies investigating the STF/textile based composite structures. However, the majority of these studies uses the single-phase STF to enhance the protective performance. In this study, additive carbide particles were included in a single-phase STF to compose a multi-phase STF and high performance fabrics were treated with this smart fluid for a further improvement in the protective performance. Based on the experimental investigations, the primary influence of the STF was found as the frictional increase in the fabrics and therefore, a numerical model was built by importing the frictional effect of the STF treatments. According to the numerical results, there is a good match with the experimental results in terms of target deformations and projectile residual velocities, which yielded a correlation index of 0.9691. It is possible to mention that experimental work requires very high level of time, labor and material expenses and therefore, this study is important to prove that complex structures as for the multi-phase STF/textile systems can be modeled simplifying the numerical models after a precise investigation on the effects of each component in the composite structure. •Shear Thickening Fluid (STF) application to textiles leads to a significant frictional increase in the structures.•Frictional interaction in textile based systems contributes to energy absorption in the structures.•Multi-phase STF in textile structures is more beneficial than single-phase STF in terms of protective performance.