U of S Engineer Awarded $605,000 to Study Clearing of Land Mines

Posted April 25, 2002


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - April 25, 2002 2002-04-18-ENG

U of S Engineer Awarded $605,000 to Study Clearing of Land Mines

How do you clear buried landmines without hurting anyone? And how can you
tell when it's safe for certain types of military equipment to travel over
war-torn lands without setting off these deadly hidden explosives?

Finding answers to these questions could save untold numbers of lives in
war-ravaged countries - nearly 26,000 people are maimed and killed every
year by landmines. Now a University of Saskatchewan engineering professor is
closing in on the answers and his efforts could make U of S a national
centre for landmine clearing research.

Professor Lal Kushwaha of the department of agricultural and bioresource
engineering will receive a total of $605,000 over five years from NSERC and
the federal Department of National Defence (DND) to develop efficient and
cost-effective machines for clearing landmines.

Kushwaha will also develop a computer model to analyze the risk to various
kinds of military vehicles that travel where landmines have been planted.
The model assesses the level of pressure required to trigger mines at
various depths in the soil.

Pressure-activated landmines are considered a very real threat to the
movement of Canadian Force personnel and vehicles. As well, landmines are a
major impediment to re-settlement and economic reconstruction in many
countries.

At present, landmines have to be cleared manually which is a slow,
labor-intensive, high-risk and expensive process. A few prototype machines
have been designed elsewhere but they're complicated to build and therefore
prohibitively expensive.

An expert in soil-machine interaction, Kushwaha was approached two years ago
by DND to investigate pressure required to activate landmines and to design
a de-mining machine. Under this contract, he has developed a prototype of a
remote-controlled machine that moves across the soil detonating any
landmines that it encounters, yet not undergoing damage itself.

The machine will be tested on simulated landmines at the CFB Suffield
research and training base in Alberta this summer, he said. If tests prove
successful, the machine could be manufactured for use in countries such as
Afghanistan, Bosnia and Cambodia.

"Every country is working on this but I think this machine will be ahead of
the pack," said Kushwaha. "We now want to develop new designs that are
simpler and more adept at dealing with different types of landmines."

The work will be done in consultation with Vikram Shankhla of the
Neutralization Protection Group, Defence RandD Canada - Suffield.

NSERC(www.nserc.ca) will provide $405,000, while DND (http://www.forces.ca/)
will provide $200,000. This funding will support up to eight graduate
students over the five years, he said.

The U of S could become a national centre for testing of de-mining machines.
The engineering college already has a "soil bin" and related special
equipment for testing agricultural machines. DND has agreed to spend another
$150,000 to move its "terra-mechanics rig" from CFB Suffield to U of S and
install and upgrade the equipment, provided that space can be found on
campus to house the two testing facilities together.

"Our soil bin would complement the Suffield facility because theirs tests
larger machines and ours tests smaller ones," Kushwaha said. "The U of S
would become a centre for landmine clearing study and other countries will
come here to do their research as well."

He stresses that land mines are an enormous problem worldwide. It's
estimated that roughly 100 million landmines are scattered over more than 60
countries.

"Even if no more land mines were laid anywhere in the world, it would take
100 years just to clear up all the land mines that have been laid so far,"
he said.

There are an estimated more than 350 different kinds of anti-personnel
mines. Kushwaha notes that certain types of land mines can be set off by
human motion, others by military vehicles carrying soldiers, and still
others by heavy tanks.

Last December, Kushwaha travelled to Bangkok to learn first-hand what some
of the problems are in clearing landmines.

Canada was the first of 124 countries to sign the 1997 Ottawa Convention, a
treaty that bans anti-personnel landmines. Canada pledged $100 million over
five years to a global effort to rid the world of buried landmines.

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For more information, contact:

Prof. Lal Kushwaha
College of Engineering
University of Saskatchewan
Phone: (306) 966-5313

Kathryn Warden
Research Communications
University of Saskatchewan
Phone: (306) 966-2506