I-Corps: Hybrid Material Carry-On Shields for Civilians

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The need for portable personal protection worldwide has increased dramatically in recent years due to extreme events such as deadly school shootings, the Boston Marathon explosion, and terrorist attacks. All the aforementioned events highlight an urgent need: civilians especially students and travelers need affordable personal protection. Therefore, developing multi-functional portable shields for civilians is a very important task. However, current personal protection products are not feasible options for civilians, because they cost too much and therefore lack practicality. The proposed I-Corps project will investigate the commercial potential and viability of new hybrid material systems that offer reasonable protection in a practical way ? low costs and multiple functions. This transformative research is expected to yield a simple yet novel engineering material design (baseline materials with embedded interfaces/adhesive layers) to reduce impact damage and material costs. The proposed portable shields would not only provide enough resistance against bullets, knives and fragments during explosion, but also could be folded as temporary helmets during earthquakes and other unexpected dangerous situations. The societal impact of the project is significant, because numerous families will benefit from our proposed products when parents use them as special laptop cases during travel, and children could bring them in backpacks to schools. If successful, the outcome of this project will have significant impact on personal safety worldwide.