As the Paris Olympics is about to open, the documentary “Ode to the Chinese Sports Spirit” produced by the Chinese Olympic Committee was officially broadcast on the CCTV Sports Channel of China Central Radio and Television. The first episode of “Advancing in the Circle” reported on the research team of our school’s deep research on the core material development of domestic high-performance shooting clothing systems, allowing Chinese athletes to wear domestic equipment.
The competition uniforms worn by rifle shooters are called “leather suits”, which include shooting suits, shooting pants, shooting shoes and gloves, etc., and are made of special materials. For a long time, it has been monopolized by India, Germany, Czech Republic, South Korea and other countries.
“How to independently and efficiently develop high-performance and high-functional materials for the training and competition environment of Chinese shooting athletes” “How to further improve the service performance of domestic shooting suits while meeting international competition standards”… The major proposition of independently developing high-performance professional shooting competition equipment for Chinese national team athletes needs to be answered urgently.
The needs of the country are the direction of scientific research. Entrusted by the Science and Education Department of the State General Administration of Sports and the Shooting and Archery Management Center of the State General Administration of Sports, the State Key Laboratory of Fiber Material Modification of Donghua University, Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, Institute of Sports Science of the State General Administration of Sports, National Advanced Functional Fiber Innovation Center, Tongji University, and Human International, set up a tough team to benchmark the International Shooting Federation Air Rifle Rules and carry out multidisciplinary integration and innovation research around the “bottleneck” problem of shooting clothing system.
“Start with the most critical and core materials.” Adhering to this principle, under the guidance of Professor Zhu Meifang, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, director of the State Key Laboratory of Fiber Material Modification and dean of the School of Materials Science and Engineering of Donghua University, Wang Gang, the chief scientist of the National Key R&D Program and researcher of the School of Materials Science and Engineering of Donghua University, led the team members to start from key problems such as high hardness and high resilience core material structure design and batch manufacturing. After continuous efforts with cooperative units, they have successively completed fiber preparation technology innovation, high-performance glue research and development, standard shooting suit fabric preparation, Chinese element clothing innovation and ready-made clothing batch preparation and other achievements, helping to realize the Chinese research and development and manufacturing of shooting competition suits.
On July 10, 2024, China Sports Daily affirmed the project results in a related report, “We have achieved key technological breakthroughs, launched products that meet the standards of the International Shooting Federation, and helped national team athletes complete the task of winning gold medals. The next step will be to participate in the integration of the team, concentrate on major tasks, and strive for a higher technical level.” It took more than two years and more than 800 days and nights, and went through multiple stages. Four generations of clothing were continuously tested, optimized and improved… During the project promotion process, the spirit of scientists and sportsmanship were integrated into the hearts of every member of the team, creating a background of serving the country with science and overcoming difficulties, and will also be transformed into a powerful spiritual driving force for building a strong country in education, science and technology, and sports in the new era.
