Utilising natural rubber latex in improving ballistic impact performance of Unidirectional fabric systems

The study reports on the ballistic limit of nonwoven fabric systems consisting of neat and natural rubber latex (NRL) coated fabrics. Unidirectional (UD) fabrics were coated with NRL and NRL filled calcium carbonate (CaCO₃) using dipping technique. Two to three coated fabrics were assembled together with neat fabrics in 12-ply fabric systems and tested for ballistic impact using fragment projectiles to determine their ballistic limit, energy absorption and specific energy absorption. The results indicated that two NRL coated UD fabrics were sufficient to enhance the ballistic impact performance of the fabric systems. A 10% increase in ballistic limit and 17% increase in the specific energy absorption were obtained from fabric systems consisting of 10 neat and 2 NRL coated plies in comparison with all-neat 12-ply fabric system. The addition of CaCO₃ in the pre-vulcanized NRL compounding did not give significant increase or contribution to the ballistic impact performance of the fabric systems. The mechanisms of fabric failure are briefly discussed in this paper.