1 TITLE: 2 Cutting Procedures, Tensile Testing, and AgeingAgingAgeing of Flexible Unidirectional Composite 3 Laminates 4 5 AUTHORS & AFFILIATIONS: 6 Amy Engelbrecht-Wiggans1, 2, Ajay Krishnamurthy1, 2, Faraz Burni1, 3, William Osborn1, Amanda L. 7 Forster1 8 9 1Material Measurement Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology, 10 Gaithersburg, MD, USA. 11 2Theiss Research, La Jolla, CA, USA. 12 3Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department of University of Maryland, College Park, 13 MD, USA 14 15 Corresponding author: 16 Amanda L. Forster (
[email protected]) 17 Tel: (301) 975-5632 18 19 Email addresses of co-authors: 20 Amy Engelbrecht-Wiggans (
[email protected]) 21 Ajay Krishnamurthy (
[email protected]) 22 Faraz Burni (
[email protected]) 23 William Osborn (
[email protected]) 24 25 KEYWORDS: 26 Composite laminate, strip tensile testing, body armor, aramid, ultra-high-molar-mass 27 polyethylene, ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene. 28 29 SUMMARY: 30 The goal of the study was to develop protocols to prepare consistent specimens for accurate 31 mechanical testing of high-strength aramid or ultra-high-molar-mass polyethylene-based flexible 32 unidirectional composite laminate materials and to describe protocols for performing artificial 33 ageingagingageing on these materials. 34 35 LONG ABSTRACT: 36 Many body armor designs incorporate unidirectional (UD) laminates. UD laminates are 37 constructed of thin (< 0.05 mm) layers of high-performance yarns, where the yarns in each layer 38 are oriented parallel to each other and held in place using binder resins and thin polymer films. 39 The armor is constructed by stacking the unidirectional layers in different orientations.