WFMJ.com News weather sports for Youngstown-Warren OhioYSU fires up its ballistic testing lab

YSU fires up its ballistic testing lab

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Youngstown State University's Mechanical Engineering Department has fired up its ballistic testing lab.

Firing shots into a 15 foot tube could result in finding the right combination of materials needed to help protect our combat troops and their vehicles.

The 3D ballistics testing at YSU, set up by professor Brian Vusanovich and his assistants, is among a few in the nation.

"This is a high tech lab that uses high speed cameras coupled with computers. The cameras operate at something like 150 thousand frames per second and the impact is collected on a computer and stored for later detailed analysis," said YSU Chemistry Professor Tim Wagner.

What they'll be analyzing is how well the composite materials perform under fire. The materials are made by a local company, Fireline, and YSU's chemistry department.

"It's actually a family of materials. We can make it very ceramic rich which makes it very hard, or we can make it metal rich which makes it more ductile or fracture resistant," said Mark Peters from Fireline, Inc.

"We are looking at the mechanical properties of the composites as well as nanoscale structural features. Most of the composites we look at are developed and produced at Fireline. But there are a subset of composites produced using novel precursors synthesized in the YSU research labs," Wagner said.

The entities have received a 1.2 Million dollar grant from the the Army Research Lab.

There are hopes that the testing done here will help develop products that can help save lives and reach the market as soon as testing proves their metal.