| Landmines, in the context of modern warfare, are used primarily to change, limit or prohibit troop movement. Landmines continue to mount casualties daily, as they have for decades. Emplaced landmine density varies greatly in different regions of the world, but a reasonable estimate for total emplacement is 10 million.;Detection of landmines is paramount to reclaiming access to land made unavailable by their emplacement. Various sensing technologies have been developed to detect both surface and buried landmines. Performance characteristics commonly used to evaluate or compare sensor technologies include: field of view or area coverage, rate of detection, probability of detection (Pd), probability of false alarm (Pfa), and false alarm rate (FAR). Generally, overall speed of the detection process hinges on the field of view and detection rate of the technology, while the quality of detection is indicated by Pd, Pfa, or FAR. Civil or humanitarian demining activities, speed is perhaps not as important but the quality of detection must exceed a given metric to be acceptable. The basic platforms for the detection of landmines are dismounted (handheld), mounted (vehicular) and airborne systems.;The sensor technologies utilized in dismounted detection systems exploit a wide array of physical phenomena. The most rudimentary is manual probing or prodding with basic tools. Thermal imaging, ground penetrating radar, and trace chemical analysis are also used. Some systems employ electromagnetic induction or eddy current decay rates. The technology that is central to this work is the measurement of ground surface velocity in the presence of acoustic or seismic excitation. Each technology has advantages and disadvantages that depend on factors including soil type, vegetation, or other environmental factors and the type of landmine being detected.;This dissertation is an investigation into a specific technological approach for the confirmation of buried landmines in a humanitarian-demining mode of operation. The approach is akin to the acoustic and seismic detection systems and leverages early manual probing or prodding methodologies. The investigation is of a mechanical probe or prodder used to inject elastic waves into subsurface objects combined with ground surface measuring instrumentation such as a laser Doppler vibrometer. |
