Humanitarian mine detection by acoustic resonance

Abstract

The JASON Committee at MITRE Corp. was tasked by DARPA to inquire into suitable technologies for humanitarian mine detection. Acoustic resonance was one of the very few technologies that the JASONs determined might be promising for the task, but was as yet unexplored at the time that they conducted their inquiry. The objective of this Seed Money investigation into acoustic resonance was to determine if it would be feasible to use acoustic resonance to provide an improvement to present methods for humanitarian mine detection. As detailed in this report, acoustic resonance methods do not appear to be feasible for this task. Although acoustic resonant responses are relatively easy to detect when they exist, they are very difficult to excite by the non-contact means that must be used for buried objects. Despite many different attempts, this research did not discover any practical means of using sound to excite resonant responses in objects known to have strong resonances. The shaker table experiments did see an effect that might be attributable to the resonance of the object under test, but the effect was weak, and exploited the a priori knowledge of the resonant frequency of the object under test to distinguish it from the background. If experiments that used objects known to have strong acoustic resonances produced such marginal results, this does not seem to be a practical method to detect objects with weak resonances or non-existent resonances. The results of this work contribute to the ORNL countermine initiative. ORNL is exploring several unconventional mine detection technologies, and is proposed to explore others. Since this research has discovered some major pitfalls in non-metallic mine detection, this experience will add realism to other strategies proposed for mine detection technologies. The experiment provided hands-on experience with inert plastic mines under field conditions, and gives ORNL additional insight into the problems of developing practical field-deployable methods of mine detection.