Trace explosives detection for finding land mines

Sylvain Desilets; Lawrence V. Haley; Govindanunny Thekkadath

doi:10.1117/12.324218

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4 September 1998 Trace explosives detection for finding land mines

Sylvain Desilets, Lawrence V. Haley, Govindanunny Thekkadath

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Proceedings Volume 3392, Detection and Remediation Technologies for Mines and Minelike Targets III; (1998) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.324218
Event: Aerospace/Defense Sensing and Controls, 1998, Orlando, FL, United States

Abstract

Trace Explosive Detectors (TED) technologies have been investigated as a means of confirming the presence of a landmine at a given location. A field trial was performed with a landmine detector prototype based on Ion Mobility Spectrometry. The system was based on the detection of the explosives in soil and had a detection limit of 0.4 ppb w/w for TNT and 7.4 ppb w/w for RDX. The minefield was composed of 51 sites on which the detector performance was evaluated. For most freshly buried sites it was found that the level of explosive was below the detection limit of the prototype. In addition, a quantitative analysis of the residual explosive transfer to the soil by hands was performed. Results showed that the level transferred by hands was in most cases below 0.1 ppb for TNT and at 0.8 ppb w/w or below for RDX. However, it was found that the explosive level contained in the soil increased with time to a level around 2 - 8 ppb w/w for TNT, ten month after the landmine burial. These rough tests have yielded some preliminary results concerning the level of explosives detectable after the burial of landmines and the dynamics of the explosive level build up in the soil with time.

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Sylvain Desilets, Lawrence V. Haley, and Govindanunny Thekkadath "Trace explosives detection for finding land mines", Proc. SPIE 3392, Detection and Remediation Technologies for Mines and Minelike Targets III, (4 September 1998); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.324218

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