Abstract:

The paper presents results of the field test of the nonlinear seismo-acoustic technique for detection and discrimination of land mines [D. Donskoy, SPIE 3392 (1998); 3710 (1999)]. The tests were conducted in summer 2001 at the U.S. Army outdoor testing facilities. Plastic antitank mines (M19, VS1.6, VS2.2) and plastic antipersonnel mines (M14, VS50, TS50) were confidently detected at their maximum burial depths in both gravel and dirt lanes. Mine M14 is one of the smallest mine and practically undetectable by the competitive techniques, including NQR, GPR, etc. The test proved that the developed nonlinear seismo-acoustic detection approach is very sensitive to AT and AP mines, while completely insensitive to false targets, such as rocks, chunks of metal or wood, thus promising to deliver high probability of detection with low false alarm rate. The results of the tests are in good agreement with the developed physical model of the seismo-acoustic detection. [Work supported by the U.S. Army Research Office under Grant Nos. DAAG55-98-1-0402 and DAAD19-00-1-0039.]