A Stryker lies on its side following a buried IED blast
in Iraq in 2007
Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) have attracted a lot of
attention as a result of their use by insurgents in Iraq and
Afghanistan, but IEDs are used by guerillas and terrorist groups
in many parts of the world, including Columbia. Being sensitive
to the problem of IEDs, two Columbian doctoral students from the
Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) set about
looking for a way to explode such devices at a distance. In
collaboration with two Columbian Universities the EPFL students
developed a device that can explode IEDs remotely by using
energy from their electromagnetic impulses.
The two main technical difficulties the students, Félix Vega
and Nicolas Mora, had to address in developing their system were
finding a way of inducting a current that would be strong enough
to set off the detonators of the mines at a distance, and of
ensuring they were attaining the resonance frequencies of the
various types of mines, which are all constructed in different
ways.
To scan the highest possible number of frequencies, it’s
necessary to create short impulses with a very fast response
time. But spanning a large spectrum of resonances results in
only a fraction of the impulse created reaching the target. This
means that by the time the current reaches the target, it is no
longer strong enough to explode the mine.
"We then realized that in spite of the wide diversity of
these mines, they are however all in similar frequency ranges",
said Nicolas Mora. "So we developed a system that concentrates
on those, and thus loses less energy."
The researchers’ system was tested at the Electromagnetic
Compatibility Laboratory in Columbia using actual improvised
mines provided by a team of professional bomb disposal experts.
They were successfully able to set off the mines at an average
distance of 20 m (65.6 ft).
The achievement of the
EPFL-led
team is the result of two years of research work and they are
now working to develop a smaller prototype that is weather
resistant and easier to transport in the field.
With the wide variety of IEDs it remains to be seen whether
the students’ device will be effective against all IEDs but,
when it is ready for the field, it should prove a valuable
addition to the arsenal of those whose dangerous job it is to
disarm the devices that kill or mutilate hundreds of thousands
of people every year.
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