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Neither bombs nor mortars can quake the award-winning, blast-resistant structures of the University of Maine’s Advanced Engineered Wood Composites Center (AEWC).
The recently developed fiber-reinforced polymer material won the Most Creative Application award this year by the American Composites Manufacturers Association. UMaine took home two awards last year, Best of Show and People’s Choice Award, for its ballistic panels used in military tents.
“Winning at ACMA is great because it shows that the work we are doing here at the lab is recognized by some of the top companies in the composite industry for its relevance and creativity,” said William Syron, one of two graduate research assistants working on the project.
The composite building material is a combination of glass fiber and polypropylene resin that compliment each other and make the material stronger, according to Larry Parent, AEWC’s senior research and development program manager.
The material, which is coated onto 2-by-4 pieces of wood and wall panels, allows for the absorption of six to seven times more energy from a blast. The coated pieces of wood are used in symphony with the coated panels and unique brackets designed by AEWC to create a building structure that can vary in size, from a mess hall to sleeping quarters.
The material was originally developed as a thermo set polymer with a form that cannot be melted or reshaped once cured. It now can be made as a thermo set and as a thermoplastic. This allows the waste material created in production to be recycled to create other plastic products. The material is recycled with the help of a company called Polystrand, using a patent-pending method developed at UMaine.
A number of students are glad to see the university assisting the armed forces.
“Works like those make me proud be belong to this university,” said Mariano Cannone, a fourth-year political science student and senior Army ROTC cadet. “It is simply fantastic that students and faculty are able to contribute their skills to our nation’s defense. As a fellow student, it’s so satisfying to see technology being applied by other students to save lives as well as be eco-friendly. I look forward to what the AEWC will bring to next year’s conference.”
Eric Lichtenberg, a first-year Army ROTC cadet, agreed.
“I am proud to belong to a university that is involved with developing technology that can be used to save the lives of American soldiers,” Lictenberg said. “There are a lot of very bright people at UMaine, and it is comforting to have these minds working hard to advance the technology of the United States military.”
In 2005 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers asked UMaine to undertake a project for creating light frame wood building structures that are able to withstand blasts from threats such as car bombs or mortars.
“The criteria laid out were that the building limit serious injuries if attacked, cannot collapse (walls could have failing components, but the structure must remain standing) and no pieces of the building could fly across the room,” Parent said. “If a structure gets hit, it’s not necessarily the bomb itself that kills people. The wood splinters and becomes shrapnel.”
According to Parent, the military has been using the same design for this type of structure since the Korean War.
To create such a building, the development team had to meet the Unified Facilities Criteria laid out by the Department of Defense to ensure construction standards and consistency. When the new structure was given its first blast test at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, it exceeded the criteria, and was deemed a success.
“This will allow the Army to use this well beyond what they originally conceived,” Parent said.
The buildings can also compartmentalize interior explosions, is lighter and quicker to setup than concrete, can withstand hurricane conditions and will last indefinitely once coated.
In addition to Florida, the development team, including seven to eight students, has traveled to Fort Polk in Louisiana for testing. Various mortars and bombs are tested on treated and untreated structures.
Regular wood can break at any imperfection, such as a knot, while UMaine designed the coated wood to break only at the highest stress point. While untreated wood will snap when strong force is applied, the coated wood will break gradually and in a controlled fashion.
Payloads that level the wooden buildings were unable to destroy the coated structures. The original structure sent to Florida to be bombed was brought back to Maine, and it is now standing next-door to the AEWC building.
“It’s forcing the wood to behave more like steel. We’re making it more ductile. That’s what we need,” Parent said.
The next step is developing a manufacturing process that makes it economically viable.
“The manufacture of this is so different, we can’t just find someone who knows how to do this. We not only develop the technology but also the manufacturing process that goes along with it,” Parent said.
Parent wants this to happen within the calendar year so he can begin the commercial process.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers came exclusively to UMaine because the school has “the whole package,” according to Parent.
“They wanted someone who could employ composites, had a wood lab and the expertise to analyze structural behavior. We’re really unique at AEWC by bringing these three together. We can design, test and model all in one place,” Parent said.
Parent hopes that this new material will assist economic development in Maine and create jobs here. “That’s the goal, to have this be made in Maine.”
