DefenCell is a vehicle barrier and blast wall designed by UK companies, J & S Franklin and Terram, made in UK and USA, and supplied by Franklin.
DefenCell is made of a geotextile material which when stored lays flat but when deployed opens out into a cellular or honeycomb shape, which gives it strength and structural integrity. Each cellular section is then filled with locally available aggregate type material, including sand, ballast or earth.
More layers of cells can be placed on top of one another and filled to create a barrier or wall to the required height and length. In Afghanistan the British Army have used the system to create 1000m of walls or berms 4m high to protect vulnerable ammunition dumps.
DefenCell, which was recently installed at Gatwick Airport, can be used as a vehicle barrier on the key approaches to a building to slow and control traffic or directly outside a building as a vehicle and blast mitigation barrier. It is suitable the makers add for rapid deployment during time of raised threat levels or for more medium term use when threat levels are uncertain but do not warrant more permanent barriers. In this case DefenCell can be ‘landscaped’ and made to look less obvious by the planting of flowers and shrubs etc, while still retaining its protective capabilities.
The deployment process is quick and simple the makers add. A small team using a small digger can do it in a matter of minutes – a 5m long barrier, 1.5m high can be deployed in less than an hour, but if necessary it can even be carried and deployed by a lone individual using nothing more than a shovel and a wheel-barrow. A similar size wall would take over 900 sandbags.
Once threat levels have again reduced the barriers and walls can be quickly removed and the aggregate or ballast re-used.
It terms of storage, a room with a floor space of only 10sqm with DefenCell stacked up to 2m high could hold enough DefenCell to build a wall 1.5m high and 1.35m wide and 500m long.
It also provides a number of significant logistical advantages over other comparable systems being up to five times less weight and transport volume, man portable as well as air-droppable. DefenCell is non metallic, with no cages or hinges, so there is no risk of secondary shrapnel or communications interference.
Jeremy Milton of distributors J&S Franklin said: "DefenCell is ideal for the protection of public buildings because it combines strength and stopping power with simplicity, versatility, ease and speed of deployment and a very low logistic footprint. The same system can be deployed in a wide variety of roles including flood barriers, force protection, construction and can be filled with locally available materials such as sand or earth."
DefenCell has undergone rigorous crash and blast testing and is compliant to US Department of State K12 anti-ram certification, where it stopped a 15,000lb truck at 50mph with no penetration. It also successfully completed vehicle crash tests by the UK’s Transport Research Laboratory, stopping a 7.5-ton truck as well as blast mitigation and ballistic tests with Advantica and HP White.
Other customers include the UK MoD in Afghanistan, the Irish Defence Forces in Chad and the US Army. You can view images at: http://www.defencell.com/security_products.html
