The feasibility of acoustic resonance for detection of plastic mines was investigated by researchers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Instrumentation and Controls Division under an internally funded program. The data reported in this paper suggest that acoustic resonance is not a practical method for mine detection. Representative small plastic anti- personnel mines were tested, and were found to not exhibit detectable acoustic resonances. Also, non-metal objects known to have strong acoustic resonances were tested with a variety of excitation techniques, and no practical non-contact method of exciting a consistently detectable resonance in a buried object was discovered. Some of the experimental data developed in this work may be useful to other researchers seeking a method to detect buried plastic mines. A number of excitation methods and their pitfalls are discussed. Excitation methods that were investigated include swept acoustic, chopped acoustic, wavelet acoustic, and mechanical shaking. Under very contrived conditions, a weak response that could be attributed to acoustic resonance was observed, but it does not appear to be practical as a mine detection feature. Transfer properties of soil were investigated. Impulse responses of several representative plastic mines were investigated. Acoustic leakage coupling, and its implications as a disruptive mechanism were investigated.
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