In an effort to raise awareness to NAMC member capabilities within the consortium, NAMC launched the member spotlight last year, showcasing an organization from the capability areas identified via the GVS OTA.
Moving forward, we will do a standalone company spotlight twice a month. With over 500+ members, we encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity and submit your company's information via the link below. There are a lot of exciting projects this fiscal year, and the spotlights help raise awareness to your company capabilities.
If you have any questions please email us at Click here to show email address.
Advanced Armor Research Group (AARG)
POC: Jeffrey MacMillan | Click here to show email address | Website | LinkedIn
Technology Objective Area: Survivability
HQ: Fredericksburg, Virginia
Organization Type: Nontraditional
Q: What is something unique about your product or service?
A: Structural composite armor systems degrade in high temperature environments due to the physical properties of resin systems used for vacuum assisted resin transfer molding. These resin systems have thermal glass transition temperatures that are too low, leading to mechanical failure, decrease in anti-ballistic performance, and reduced life cycle when operating temperatures meet and exceed 74ºC. To address the elevated temperature issues, Advanced Armor Research Group (AARG) has teamed with a leading chemical manufacturer to introduce an advanced resin with improved toughness and thermal performance to our structurally engineered composite armor systems.
Q: Which Government Customer would you like to pitch your organization to?
A: Customers interested in Ceramic based Ballistic Armor protection.
Q: What capability gaps are you able to fill and which industry colleagues would you like to know about them?
A: We feel there are 4 significant differentiators with our armor:
- Thermal tolerance especially in the higher temperatures
- Resin Properties: The resin system has been engineered to improve damage tolerance and multi-hit performance of structural composite armor systems in the hottest environments. When cured, the resin system has a thermal glass transition temperature, Tg, of 130ºC, which is much higher than currently available resin systems used for anti-ballistic composite armor. The mechanical properties have been optimized for improved fracture toughness to minimize structural damage by absorbing more energy to localize back face deflection, which improves the multi-hit performance at reduced weight. The fracture toughness (critical strain energy release rate G1C) measured according to ASTM D 5045-95 is 1.6KJ/m2 which is a significant improvement (>30%) over current resins used in structural composite armor.
- The improved composite toughness and thermal performance in combination with cost effective strike face materials give AARG’s structurally engineered armor systems improved life cycle performance and durability.
- Improved performance for armor components should result in opportunities to reduce system weight.