NATURE’S BODY ARMOUR

Abdallah Ghazlan and his team are working on a project that could see lightweight sections of their bio-inspired padding (a) fitted to the underbelly of vehicles deployed in war zones. Trabecular bone (b) has a porous, complex, lattice-like structure made up of concave (CCV), convex (CVX) and hybrid (HYB) forms that, when mimicked and 3D printed (d, e), would enable it to dissipate an IEDS explosive effects (c). “[This] may lead to intricate body armour panels with superior damage mitigation characteristics,” writes Ghazlan in the January 2021 study, Inspiration from Nature’s body armours – A review of biological and bioinspired composites.