Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
OPTICS AND LASERS IN ENGINEERING, cilt.121, ss.54-60, 2019 (SCI-Expanded)
The interaction between a laser and a composite material has been an intense subject within the past decade and become an emerging field for the defense and manufacturing industry since high-power lasers were initiated to be utilized for the directed-beam applications. In this study, a specially developed composite material for the ballistic applications was shined to a continuous wave (CW) laser beam at 915 nm. The ballistic material was composed of 77 layers of the single sheet of the SR-3136 by Spectra Shield (R) from Honeywell consisting of ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMW-PE) fibers reinforced with low-density PE (LD-PE) fibers and a polyurethane-based thermoplastic resin. At the instant of the exposure, the region of interest was completely evaporated and punctured with a slight swelling around the hole where the temperature was over 450 degrees C. The composite material was drilled completely upon exceeding 2010 of laser energy. The chemical and physical changes on the composite material after the laser exposure were extensively studied by a combination of techniques including High-Resolution Scanning Electron Microscopy (HR-SEM), Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDX) and X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS). The physical properties of a single layer of the SR-3136 were also studied using HR-SEM, UV-VIS-NIR Absorption Spectroscopy, Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) and XPS. The research presented here reveals the first study on the effects of the high-power laser beam irradiance on the fiber-reinforced composite materials utilized for the ballistic protection.