Very excited to announce a research and development partnership with Advanced Blast & Ballistic Systems (ABBS), the world-leader in the development of active systems for protecting armoured vehicles from mine and IED blasts.

ABBS develops technology in transport safety systems, specifically blast and ballistic protection systems for land vehicles, as well as active VTOL crash prevention systems, including their latest belly plate design, proven to provide protection for civilians, aid agencies and the military.

The partnership will focus on the use of GC’s nanomaterials engineering technologies – particularly GC Shield® technology – to improve blast and ballistic protection performance of its systems, with testing and FEA modelling which explores the use of Graphene enhanced materials as a part of its continued development of the underbelly blast plate.

GC Shield technology uses graphene and aerogel composite layers to create a lightweight, shock dispersant and resilient material that is highly effective – with ‘Hypersonic Shear Thickening’, an unrivalled ability to disperse and reflect impact forces. The harder the impact, the greater the protection. Find out more here.

“This is a unique opportunity for us to extend our proven GC Shield technology to deliver major performance enhancements to existing protection solutions where the combination of strength, lightness and resilience are all required” said Sandy Chen, GC CEO & Co-Founder.  “Graphene is an incredible material – but it’s the nanomaterials engineering expertise that makes it actually work in critical real-world applications.”

Roger Sloman, Founder and Managing Director, said “ABBS is delighted to be working with the GC Team to explore how their graphene technology can contribute to increased performance of the ABBS product range, and especially in the carbon fibre reinforced belly plate (CFRB) designs which it has recently been developing under a UK MOD DSTL/DASA contract.  A weight reduction up to 30% might be possible compared to a standard ballistic steel design”.

ABBS has routine contacts with the US Army Ground Vehicle Systems Centre in Detroit and has Pentagon interest in its ground-breaking VGAM™ (Vehicle Global Acceleration Mitigation) system which uses novel ultrafast-acting Linear Rocket Motors to counteract the lifting forces from even large IED’s to keep the vehicle on the ground and protect the occupants from disabling or even fatal spinal acceleration injuries.

ABBS is currently seeking up to $3m funding for its new US subsidiary Active Safety System Technologies Inc. via a WeFunder campaign that has just launched. More details can be found on https://wefunder.com/active.safety.system.technologies.llc.  Please note that ABBS are ‘testing the waters’ to gauge investor interest in an offering under Regulation Crowdfunding. No money or other consideration is being solicited. If sent, it will not be accepted. No offer to buy securities will be accepted. No part of the purchase price will be received until a Form C is filed and only through Wefunder’s platform. Any indication of interest involves no obligation or commitment of any kind. https://help.wefunder.com/en_US/testing-the-waters-legal-disclosure

GC Shield® technology is protected by registered patents.

About Advanced Blast & Ballistic Systems (ABBS): Advanced Blast & Ballistic Systems Ltd, based in Derbyshire, UK, has designed a remarkable system for armoured vehicles which can counteract the huge forces generated by underbelly mines and IED’s, preventing the vehicle being blasted into the air and thus avoiding the potentially disabling spinal acceleration injuries that the crew might otherwise sustain. The system uses specially developed leading edge SAFE/ARM/ control/initiation systems and immensely powerful patented Linear Rocket Motor (LRM™) designs which can deliver all their impulse in less than 100milliseconds to make the vehicles ‘weigh’ many hundreds of tons for just the brief period that the mine blast forces are acting on the vehicle. ABBS is currently working with the US Army to mature the system for armoured vehicles. For more information, please visit www.advanced-blast.com