Carbon fiber body armor?
 

I'm a mechanical engineering student at OU, and one of my buddies on the OU race team (they build a mini Indy race car and compete in it) said that they sometimes get to mess around with all the machine shop equipment and everything.

Anyways, he told me they fabbed up a bunch of random stuff made of carbon fiber just for fun. What are everyone's thoughts about carbon fiber body panels in a jacket? I figure if we did it I'd use my current armor or make a custom template that fits better.

I'm not very worried about the weight, I'm used to carrying a bit of weight around on my shoulders/back. I figured that carbon fiber would be a bit better in the event of a crash, especially for the back armor, and I'd put a layer of gel padding underneath it.

Unfortunately my understanding is we couldn't produce the pieces for sale because they're technically University property, but we're allowed to use them for personal use. But once a working prototype was available it wouldn't take much to produce them.

Comments? Questions? I'd love to hear everyone's opinion on this.

personally, I would not spend the money on them because they would likely be somewhat expensive. I don't hold a lot of extra value to CF when it comes to my jacket protection becuase my plastic pieces (CV) under the leather has taken some pretty good shots and done quite well at saving my body parts.

I would THINK that if they were significantly better the race industry would be using them more, and I don't think I see that there, although someone may be able to correct me on that part.

OTOH, if you wanna give it a try, it couldn't hurt. When you crash test them, let us know how they worked! ;) ;) ;)

(not really....please don't wreck!!!!)

I would say the place for them would be exterior sliders. Like the titanium ones found on some shoulder / elbow pads on jackets. But interior pockets are better served by foam and plastic where the risk of carbon splinters entering the body are not a good thing.

Well the down side to carbon bits is if you end up breaking it then you have a jacket full of razor blades....

I would stay away from it in your application just for the reason..... ;)

+1 on avoiding splintering. How abrasion resistant is CF compared to plastic? I can't imagine that it's as good as titanium!

Carbon fiber seat cowl maybe? I'd be into that... although that would only interest other SH owners and not the motorcycle population in general.

Great point about the CF splintering and creating all kinds of other damage. However Kevlar alone is extremely flexible. Can be formed like CF and is extremely abrasion resistant. I used to make cockpit parts for apache helicopters and most of them were straight Kevlar layup.

Im planning a future full carbon fiber body and tank for my SH... gonna make up my own full fairing design but thats a project for later.. right now Im working on anodizing until I can afford a cnc machine :p

I had never thought about the splintering, an excellent point by everyone that made it. As to the seat cowl, that's an excellent idea 7moore7; I'll look into it. I'd still have to get a seat cowl but from what I can tell it would be much more difficult to reproduce because of its shape, especially because none of us are experts at this.

The only thing that makes carbon fiber better than titanium is the obvious weight difference, but then again titanium won't splinter. As to the difference in abrasion wear, I doubt CF is anywhere close to titanium.

On a related note, I think this could be something armor or even jackets are made out of in the near future.

Carbon nanotube - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Being both a mechanical engineering student as well as a chem minor, this stuff absolutely fascinates me, and the idea of having tons of this stuff to manufacture with is dumbfounding.