High-pressure water jets (HPWJ) are essential for industrial cleaning but pose significant safety risks to operators. Our previous research introduced a fiber-filled elastomer that improved protection; however, achieving a high level of dexterity alongside extreme penetration resistance remained a critical challenge. This study proposes a novel multi-layered architectural material designed to overcome this trade-off. The developed material consists of a non-bonded multi-layered structure of high-strength fiber-reinforced elastomers, incorporating fluid-buffered layers between the sheets. The non-bonded architecture allows for independent interlayer sliding, resulting in a 7.4-fold increase in flexibility compared to conventional protective materials. Simultaneously, the fluid-buffered layers effectively dissipate the concentrated impact energy of the jet, achieving an excellent improvement in protective performance (up to 500 times higher penetration resistance). These results demonstrate that the synergy between the fiber-reinforced layers and the fluid-buffered mechanism provides a breakthrough in safety and ergonomic comfort. This multi-layered architectural design offers a highly practical and effective solution for next-generation protective equipment in high-pressure water jet environments.

This paper reports the first attempt to extract the fiber bundles in the corn bract leaves (agricultural waste material). The hydrothermal treatment or dew retting treatment was found to be effective for this purpose. The hydrothermal treatment at 130 °C for one day could more effectively remove the parenchyma cells surrounding the bast fiber bundle as compared with the dew retting treatment. The apparent crystallinity index and the crystallite size of the fiber bundles obtained from the bract leaves after the hydrothermal treatment at 130 °C for one day resulted in 62.7 % and 3.9 nm, respectively. The tensile properties were measured using the fiber bundles obtained after the dew retting treatment at room temperature for one month, and the tensile strength and elongation at break resulted in 1.55 ± 0.35 gf/d and 0.50 ± 0.20 %, respectively.