SBIR-STTR Award

Dogs can detect plastic case land mines with approximately 90% effectiveness. It is not certain whether they are detecting TN.C vapors diffusing through the casing or eminations from the plastic case or both. Surface Accoustic Wave (SAW) detectors are potentially far less expensive than chemiluiainescence or Mass Spec devices. A SAW device depends on trace chemicals in the atinosphere being absorbed into the polymer film coated on the crystal to imbalance the circuit. Before these polymer films can be designed, we must know the chemical nature of the eminations from the various land mine casings in current world-wide production. The purpose of this project is to analyze the current land mine casings for volatile content and also chemical nature of the casing and volatiles.

Benefits:
This analysis project would benefit any type of detector system being utilized for land mine detection. Further down the road, development of a SAW device based on the analytical data to be generated would enable development of low cost SAW detectors.

Keywords:
land mine mine casing