An investigation of acoustic-to-seismic coupling to detect buried antitank landmines

Abstract

When an acoustic wave strikes the ground surface, energy is coupled into the motion of the fluid/solid frame comprising the ground. This phenomenon is termed acoustic-to-seismic (A/S) coupling. In the ground, the Biot Type II or Biot slow waves travel with a speed well below the speed of sound in air. The porous nature of the ground causes the entering acoustic wave to bend toward the normal and the acoustic wave propagates downward into the ground. When an object is buried a few cm below the ground surface, it distinctly changes the A/S coupled motion. These changes can be sensed by measuring vibrational particle velocity on the ground surface. Taking advantage of a noncontact remote measurement technique, the A/S coupling measurements for antitank landmine detection are conducted using a laser Doppler-vibrometer (LDV). Recent field measurements in both calibration and blind mine lanes and the resulting data analyses, which demonstrate the effectiveness of this technique, are described in this paper.

Optimal Maneuvering of Seismic Sensors for Localization of Subsurface Targets

“…It takes significant time and resources to clear out regions contaminated by mines, so it is important to develop efficient detection and localization systems to find the mines. Existing systems are usually based on Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) and Electromagnetic Induction (EMI) sensing, but recent efforts [1]- [6] have employed seismic waves to detect subsurface targets.…”

“…Previous work on the seismic detection of landmines can be divided into two categories: methods that measure the seismic wave field directly above a mine and those that only measure a portion of the wave field at a stand-off distance [4], [5]. The first technique has been shown to be relatively resistant to clutter due to the strong resonant response directly above the mine; however, this method is quite time consuming due to the large number of measurements needed to ensure that some of the measurement points are above the mine [3], [6], [7]. Efforts to speed up these techniques using large arrays of sensors are ongoing [8], [9].…”

Heat Transfer for NDE: Landmine Detection

“…Taking in mind this limitation new techniques are appearing to detect the plastic landmines. Several techniques have been proposed for mine detection, such as acoustic techniques, Sabatier & Xiang (2001); X-rays techniques, Lockwood et al (1997); biosensors, Larsson & Abrahamsson (1993); ion mobility spectrometers, Jankowski et al (1992); nuclear quadrupole resonance, Englelbeen (1998); neutron analysis, Bach et al (1996); ground penetrating radar (GPR) and infrared thermography (IRT), López et al (2009); Thanh et al (2009;2007;. Each technique has its advantages and disadvantages, for a more detailed description of theses techniques see Furuta & Ishikawa (2009); Gros & Bruschini (1998); López (2003); Robledoa et al (2009);Siegel (2002).…”

Determining boreal clearcut object properties and characteristics for identification purposes

“…through computer stereo vision or time-of-flight imaging (Hussman et al 2008), and even exceed human capabilities via e.g. ground penetrating radar (Annan 2009) or acoustic waves (Sabatier and Xiang 2001). Through such techniques, it is plausible that sub-surface object identification, automatic obstacle-avoidance or guidance during stump removal can be enabled.…”