The new textile, created in California, is made from plastics rather than fibres or metal, and switches between rigid and soft states as necessary. It cushioned warriors from arrows and blows from swords, axes, maces and other weapons, while snuggly draping round their body. When put together they are designed to be firm and strong but also pliable, so they can be worn on the body.
#Chain mail designer series
Traditional chain mail, as worn by knights in the medieval-era, is made up of a series of linked metal rings. 'Our work provides routes towards lightweight, tunable and adaptive fabrics, with potential applications in wearable exoskeletons, haptic architectures and reconfigurable medical supports.' 'This dramatic increase in bending resistance arises because the interlocking particles have high tensile resistance, unlike what is found for loose granular media.' 'We show that, with small external pressure (about 93 kilopascals), the sheets become more than 25 times stiffer than in their relaxed configuration,' the team wrote. The chain mails conform to complex shapes, but when pressure is exerted at their boundaries, the particles interlock and the chain mails jam.
This material is a structured fabric with tunable bending modulus, consisting of three-dimensional particles arranged into layered chain mails.
Once realised, however, the fabrics’ properties are usually fixed.
Their design can target desirable characteristics, such as high impact resistance, thermal regulation, or electrical conductivity. Structured fabrics, such as woven sheets or chain mail, derive their properties both from the constitutive materials and their geometry.