Last week's incident on campus may have canceled classes for one day, but that didn't keep students from continuing their research that week.
Associate professor John Myers invited me out the UMR's Experimental Mine last Friday to watch as Matt Tinsley, a graduate student in civil engineering from Jonesboro, Ark., put a new, eco-friendly material up against a few pounds of RDX.
A layer of concrete made from wood fibers and fly ash, two materials that otherwise end up in our nation's landfills, is added to a traditional, reinforced concrete block. Then a layer of polyurethane -- think truck-bed-liner material here -- is added to the top of the block. Another concrete block is added to provide an additional source of protection before Matt, with the assistance of UMR explosive engineering students, hangs RDX above the material. The amounts of RDX get bigger, and the distance closer, until he make the polyurethane fail.
Why use wood fibers and fly ash? Well, there are a couple of reasons. First, it's reusing waste products. Second, it lessens the amount of debris. The material essentially disintegrates when the blast hits it and the super-stretchy polyurethane layer expands to contain what's left. If regular concrete was used, concrete chunks would be flying everywhere.
Sounds like a win-win situation to me.
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