Leveraging Army Unique Mission Requirements to Advance the State-of-the-Art in Adhesives Development

Abstract : The selection and substitution of materials is the keystone of successful engineering. Ground vehicle armor represents a complex and broad spectrum of possible designs that are continually evolving to meet the protection needs imposed by everemerging threats. Adhesive selection plays a critical role in lightweight armor design. Hence, it is vital to capture, consolidate, and organize adhesive data in a meaningful way for both engineering design and material advancement. Many adhesives have been available from the commercial market over the years. Those intended for aerospace applications tend to have the highest pedigree engineering criteria defined within existing databases. The Army s adhesive needs push the quest for desirable properties well outside of the aerospace regime, which makes a trial and error selection approach both costly and time consuming. The vastness and variance in candidate adhesives and their potential applications for the Army create an overly complex material selection problem. The goal of this research is to capitalize on modern database and materials informatics capabilities to facilitate the advancement of adhesion science at a faster rate.