Comparison of an Analytical and Numerical Solution for the Landmine Detection Problem

M. Mattingly[1], K. McIlhany[2], and R. Malek-Madani[3]

[1]Applied Research Laboratory, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA
[2]Physics Department, United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD, USA
[3]Mathematics Department, United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD, USA
Published in 2008

Acoustic landmine detection is accomplished using a loud speaker as an airborne source to generate low-frequency waves that enter the soil at a certain incident angle. At a specific frequency, the landmine will "vibrate" at resonance, imparting a certain velocity on the soil particles above it that is detected by a scanning Laser Doppler Vibrometer system.

The ability to mathematically predict the soil surface velocity plots created from these experiments would enable the technology to be implemented faster in more challenging environments. A solution was implemented with COMSOL, and has significantly reduced the computational time and resources necessary to find a solution while remaining accurate to the analytical result.

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