preview

Kevlar Essay

Decent Essays

After watching the videos and understanding what is being developed in the industry of material engineering, the material that I personally found most interesting was kevlar. It seemed like such a lightweight material yet it is very strong and it has a lot of different applications. Poly-paraphenylene terephthalamide known as Kevlar, was invented by the chemist Stephanie Kwolek back in 1971. The material is produced by a chemical reaction with solvent and solutes. The production of this material is expensive as it is not easy to do. However it is not easy to produce Kevlar as this source states “However, the fabric is expensive, difficult to manufacture because of its tight weave construction” (Hosur). The following image shows the chemical …show more content…

The polymer owes its high strength to the many inter-chain bonds. These inter-molecular hydrogen bonds form between the carbonyl groups and NH centers. Additional strength is derived from aromatic stacking interactions between adjacent strands. These interactions have a greater influence on Kevlar than the van der Waals interactions and chain length that typically influence the properties of other synthetic polymers and fibers” (Wikipedia). Therefore its main strength comes from the intermolecular bonds and stacking of the material. Even though Kevlar is a very strong material, it is yet very light considering the high strain it can handle. As this source claims “Their high strength-to-weight ratio and ability to resist high-speed impacts enable them to be more efficient than metals” (Zhu). By this measure it is also known that Kevlar is almost five more times stronger than steel. This image shows the tensile strength of Kevlar in comparison to other materials. As seen, there is drastic difference and it has a much larger tensile strength. Kevlar has a lot of different applications, however it is most known for its application in the protection field. It is usually used for armors, objects such as helmets and ballistic

Get Access