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Design and Analysis of Pulse Induction Underground Mines Detection System

Conference Paper · September 2012

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 Design and Analysis of Pulse Induction Underground Mines Detection System

A.Z. Ahmad Firdausa,1, Vernoon A.W.N.b,1, K.N. Syahirahc,1, S.M. Hafisd,1, Siti Nurul
Aqmariah Mohd Kanafiahe,1, Ismail I.I.f,1 and A.Z. Nur Hidayah1,g
1
Universiti Malaysia Perlis, School of Mechatronic Engineering, Perlis, Malaysia.
2
Universiti Malaysia Perlis, School of Materials Engineering, Perlis, Malaysia

ahmadfirdaus@unimap.edu.mya, vernoon@gmail.comb, syahirahkhalid@unimap.edu.myc,

hafissulaiman@unimap.edu.myd, aqmariah@unimap.edu.mye, , ismailishaq@unimap.edu.myf and
hidayah@unimap.edu.myg

Keywords: performance; depth; detectability; discriminability.

Abstract. This paper mainly emphases on the design and analysis of underground mines detection
system. Improvement from traditional technique is made to enhance the buried landmine discovery.
Beat Frequency Oscillation, Induction Balance and Pulse Induction detection technology are
discussed and assessment are made among them. Pulse induction was preferred to be developed and
tested for this research. This study involves experiments of Pulse Induction to detect ferrous and
non-ferrous metal with two circumstances included which are ground and underground test.
Consequently, underground test results indicated that the designed Pulse Induction metal detector
was capable of detecting ferrous and non-ferrous metal at very good penetration depth at 31 cm.
Therefore, Pulse Induction metal detection system delivered dependable and steady performance in
sensing ferrous and non-ferrous metallic object.

Introduction

Landmines are manufacture friendly, inexpensive and efficient military hardware that could be
deployed easily at specific intervals by mines expertise or engineer on minefields over large scale to
put off enemy movements [1]. There are around 350 different designs of mines that could be
categorized to anti-personnel (APL) and anti-tank landmines (ATL). APL was developed to
exterminate and wound personnel while ATL designed to hamper the advance or wipe out vehicles.
In a typical APL design, the explosive part of the mines was buried underground while the
detonator part was placed just on the ground and it was pressure activated. In the past, most of the
mines were made out of metal. Metal detector (MD) device has been developed to detect a
conceivable APL. There were three widely used techniques for MD design namely Beat Frequency
Oscillator (BFO), Pulse Induction (PI) and Very Low Frequency (VLF). But the percentage of
metal composition has been reduced ever since to counter the effectiveness of metal detection
device. The detonator that was usually placed on the ground was also made of different material,
usually plastic to avoid detection, leaving explosive material that has small composition of metal
underground.
VLF, also known as Induction Balance was capable to detect ferrous and non-ferrous metal
objects. There will be two balanced coils: the outer coil as transmitter to transmit the magnetic field
by using the alternating current (AC) for the object to distort it while the inner coil act as receiver to
pick up the magnetic field created by the object and amplify it. Although VLF does present
excellent performance in discriminating between ferrous and non-ferrous object, however, it has
difficulty in dealing with mineralized environment [2]. BFO operated based on two radio frequency
(RF) oscillators which were tuned to be nearly similar to each other, offers basic and simple metal
detection. However it lacks in sufficient control and accuracy [3].
PI systems mainly used only single coil for both transmitting and receiving. PI system has
the advantages in the environment consisting of little scrap, on saltwater coast or mineralized soil.
Nevertheless, they are able to neglect both conductive salts and mineralization at the same time
because they have the ground balance system. Besides, they are able to sense items buried deep
underground but on the other hand, PI detectors are responsive to iron and do not have the
capability to distinguish category of metallic object. The PI metal detector method has good
features in accuracy to measure the depth at which an object will be discovered [2]. PI sensing
technique was favored to be implemented because it has been renowned to fulfill the obligation and
goals to detect landmine efficiently.

PI System Design. The design block diagram for PI detection system is shown in Fig.1. The block
diagram shows the entire system from object detection until it produce output and produce detection
tone through audio system. The PI detection system comprises of the pulse generator, comparator,
sensitivity, reference, microcontroller and audio system.

Search Coil Reference Sensitivity

Comparator Microcontroller Audio

Ob
jec
t
Pulse Generator

Fig. 1: Design Block Diagram of PI Detection System.

The signal pulses from pulse generator are generated to search coil. Whenever an object detected by
the search coil, there will be an extension to the period of reflective pulses to varnish and voltage
pick up. Here, the comparator will capture the output signal and it will compare picked up voltages
and produce a digital signal signifying which is greater. Reference system operates in giving an
accurate voltage reference to the comparator system which then being used to compare with
incoming signal from detected object. Once the reference value is set, that reference will be suit to
detect ferrous and non-ferrous metal at that particular environment. The magnitude of the
responsiveness from sensitivity system will produce an indicated output signal to microcontroller.
The differences of sensitivity magnitude will show vary in magnitude of detection. Here, the
deviation between detect and non-detect state can be known through the tone produced by the audio
system such as loudspeaker [4].

PI Circuit Simulation. A simulation circuit is shown in Fig. 3 of metal detection system which
connected to PIC16F1824 and audio system. Microcontroller is the core of the system to drive
every operation and produce throughput through audio to indicate detection in this circuit. Moving
on to sensitivity system, a 5K potentiometer is applied to control the responsiveness of the coil. To
generate pulses, a BS170 which is an N-Channel enhancement mode field effect transistors (FET)
DMOS technology is used to act as pulse generator. This FET has been chosen because it
underrates on-state resistance while offered rugged, reliable, and fast switching performance. A
BS170 could produce continuous rectangular pulses with particular frequency.
 Fig. 2: Pulse Induction Metal Detection Schematic Circuit.

Next, a high current switching MOSFET, IRF740 is preferred in the circuit construction act
as catalyst to enhance the current supply that will boost the magnetic field. Magnetic field is
depending on the electric current where the strength of the magnetic field increases when high
current is supplied through the coil [5]. Eq. 2 shows the magnetic field, B formula that can be used
to determine the strength of the magnetic field produce under the variable parameters. The
implementation of two diodes protects the operational amplifier (Op-Amp) from due to excessive
input voltage. Because of these diodes, the input voltage of the op-amp is clamped to a range of
voltage. The diodes are called clamping diodes.
(Eq.2)

A precision high rapidity operational amplifier, LM318N is designed for applications

requiring wide-ranging bandwidth and high slew. The implementation of LM318N is made to
compare the differential voltage between reference voltage and incoming voltage. It draws less
current supply and saves space. Basically, every circuit construction is necessarily needs power
supply to power every component. Here, this circuit needs a supply of 14V – 20V DC to fully
operate. The circuit is supplied with 18V DC where step down voltage is done here from 18V to
12V and then 5V DC. This could be done with voltage regulator and few large capacitors is
employed with the intention of consistently supply the components with sufficient voltage [6].

Search Coil Design. The dimension of the coil winding is generally reliant on the required
detection depth. The process begins with calculation on the number of coil turns, diameter and
inductance of the search coil. These parameters are significant to determine the most suitable
parameter for the coil to integrate into detection structure. In conjunction to have the numerical
parameters for search coil, loop inductance calculation formula [7], [8] can be used as shown in Eq.
(1).

(Eq.1)
The detector coil is wound with enameled Standard Wire Gauge (SWG) copper wire of
0.914mm with diameter of 20cm and 27 turns. Theoretically calculation shows the coil inductance
value is 501μH. It is a single monoloop air cored coil that produces 408μH when it is winded
around a winding workspace.
However, when the coil is removed from the winding workspace and re-measured, it shows
decrement in inductance value, 354μH. Decrement of inductance reading is affected by the iron
nails nearby it. Basically, an inductance value will be adjusted if there is ferromagnetic material
such as iron nail near to the inductor [9].
Shielded PI detector will not trigger false signals when it touched the ground. After the
winding process, the coil is wrapped with two layers of electrical insulation tape as first and second
layer. Then it is wrapped with another layer of 2cm stripes aluminum foil leaving open gap of about
1–2cm and added a ground wire over the aluminum stripes. Finally third layer wrapping of
insulation tape over the aluminum stripes. This type shielding, also known as Faraday shielding has
proven to prevent coil from picking up external noise from the environment [10].

Experimental Test

Based from simulated design, a prototype circuit as shown in Fig. 3 was built to verify whether the
circuit can detect ferrous and non-ferrous metal. Four metal plates with standard size of 15cm x
15cm were used as test specimens. The metal was of different types, comprising ferrous metal: iron
stainless steel and also non-ferrous metal: aluminum and zinc. An operational pulse induction
circuit will sound three tones as initialization of the system and then 1Hz tick will be heard. A beep
tone is produced when a metallic material is near the detector coil. Metal detection test were
conducted in two conditions: ground and underground. The purpose of these tests was to simulate
metal detection in condition of metal landmines component whether located on the ground (as
detonator) or buried underground (as explosive).

Fig.3: Pulse Induction Circuit Prototype.

Result and Analysis

The performance of the proposed PI metal detector was tested through the experiment using the
standard sized specimens with different level of sensitivity. This was to determine the sensitivity
that produced the maximum depth of metal detection.

Ground Detection Test. Fig. 4 demonstrates the ground test result for four different metallic
objects. Graph illustrated in Fig. 4 showed the detection depth for four metallic objects when the
sensitivity was adjusted at different levels. From the graph, it is noticeable that aluminum produced
the greatest depth followed by zinc, iron and steel. Peak detection depth that was recorded from
aluminum was 30 cm. The trend also showed that as the sensitivity level increases, the detection
depth rises dramatically along with it. Besides, non-ferrous metallic object like aluminum and zinc
produce higher detection depth compared to ferrous metallic, iron and steel. In comparison between
non-ferrous object, aluminum delivers better depth than zinc. On the other hand, iron conveys
utmost depth compared with steel.
 40 40
30
Detection Depth(cm)

Detection Depth(cm)
30
20 20
10 10
0 0

Sensitivity(Volt) Sensitivity(Volt)

Iron Steel Aluminum Zinc Iron Steel Aluminum Zinc

Figure 4: Graph of Detection Depth against Figure 5: Graph of Detection Depth against
Sensitivity for Ground Test. Sensitivity for Underground Test.

Underground Detection Test. In the underground test, the specimen was buried beneath the sand
while search coil was placed above it. Fig. 5 showed graph that displays the outcome from
underground test using same variables as discussed in ground test. The test showed that aluminum
had the highest detection depth at 31 cm followed by zinc, iron and steel. Other findings were of
similar to ground test.

Discussions

Proposed PI system produced better performance in terms of stability and accuracy as scope of tests
cover both ground and underground compared to designed system in [4], where it was only tested
for ground with achieved detection depth of 4 cm depth. When comparing the same aspect to the
other designed system, proposed PI system served for better result where distance between search
coil and metal objects for the system designed in [13] was only 2 cm. The proposed system has also
been tested with both ferrous and non-ferrous material. Aluminum yield better discovery of depth in
both ground and underground test as compared among the zinc, iron and steel. Both tests showed
that aluminum could achieve depth at about 31 cm, followed by zinc. It is obviously shown that
non-ferrous metallic object can be detected by PI metal detector at good depth penetration for
ground and underground condition. Table 1 and Table 2 show the summary of maximum depth for
metal detected during ground and underground test. Non-ferrous metallic object has high
conductivity at low resistance that could allow the eddy current to flow easily whereas ferrous has
low conductivity which means it has high eddy current friction [11]. Non-ferrous metal has higher
conductivity values compared to ferrous metal [12]. Thus, it can be proven that non-ferrous metal
have excellent conductivity that associated with good depth penetration at air and ground. The
sensitivity level was limited to 2.50V for both ground and underground test as when it was tuned
beyond, high noise was picked resulting inaccuracy.

Table 1: Summary of Maximum Depth Detected for Non-Ferrous Type of Metal

Material Test Medium Maximum Depth (cm)
Ground 30
Aluminium
Underground 31
Ground 29
Zinc
Underground 29
 Table 2: Summary of Maximum Depth Detected for Ferrous Type of Metal
Material Test Medium Maximum Depth (cm)
Ground 27
Iron
Underground 28
Ground 19
Steel
Underground 18

Conclusions

Proposed PI metal detection circuit was capable to detect ferrous and non-ferrous material.
Detectability analysis was taken place on the data attained where both investigations comprise of
ground and underground test. At the end of examination, it can be outlined that PI metal detector is
capable to detect non-ferrous metal at deeper depth than ferrous metal when they are with or
without covered in the ground in the view of their high conductivity properties.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to credit University Malaysia Perlis for providing aid through project
supervision and permission for laboratory equipment use. This project was also financially
supported by Ministry of Education through RAGS grant no. 9018-00039.

References

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