Physical Optics Corporation — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: A17-115

Description

To address the Army need for mechanisms to make ground vehicle armor more adaptive and better defeat threats, Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes to develop a new Linear Armor Positioner and Damper (LAPD).The key innovation comes from the arrangement and design of the positioning mechanism to take advantage of the damping characteristics of pneumatic/hydraulic linear actuators during a ballistic shock event.Specifically, the mechanism design reduces the severity of shock events caused by enemy weaponry through the gas/liquid compression in a linear actuator and by increasing the distance these shock events occur from the vehicle interior.As a result, LAPD meets the Army need for adaptive mechanisms to better defeat threats without imposing the significant weight burdens adding armor causes.In Phase I, POC will research and develop the LAPD design, performing stress, thermal, and fatigue analyses.In Phase II, a fully functional LAPD prototype will be manufactured and tested to a subset of applicable tests in Army specification ATDP-2404 such as transport and ground vehicle vibration and cycling, and delivered to the Army.