Human Hair Inspires Next-Gen Body Armor Materials

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Tug on a human hair hard enough and it will probably fall out, but trying to then break that strand of hair with your bare hands is much more difficult. Hair is strong, but how strong? According to the University of California, San Diego, it's strong enough to inspire the next generation of body armor.

Yang Yu, Wen Yang, Bin Wang, and Marc André Meyers of UC San Diego produced the recently published paper "Structure and mechanical behavior of human hair." It discusses how human hair has a strength to weight ratio very similar to that of steel, but also how its biological properties make it a suitable basis for new materials.

Human hair can be broken down into two key parts: the cortex and matrix. The matrix is "an amorphous (random) structure," while the cortex is made up of lots of fine fibers sitting in parallel which are a coiled spiral shape. The combination of the cortex and matrix is what gives hair its strength.

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Stretching hair makes the coiled spirals stretch rather than the hair breaking. Interestingly, the faster hair is stretched the stronger it is, meaning it can deal with a sudden, strong force very effectively. High humidity also helps, with hair able to withstand up to 80 percent deformation before breaking compared to 50 percent when dry. Temperatures of up to 60 degrees Celsius can also be tolerated before strength is negaively impacted.

By researching the properties of hair at the nanoscale, the UC San Diego team believes new materials can be developed that enjoy the same positive properties. That level of strength combined with how lightweight hair is, could usher in materials perfect for an advanced form of light body armor.

However, the research is just as interesting to companies who produce hair care products and want to offer us new products that improve hair strength yet further, as well as how to more effectively fix damaged hair.

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