JP2001317897A - Apparatus and method for clearing mine - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To obtain an apparatus for clearing a minefield capable of safely and surely conducting a mine source treatment of a large area in a short time. SOLUTION: A laser beam having an ultrashort pulse and a high energy is converged by a scan converging unit 2, and is incident substantially perpendicularly to a ground surface 8. Thus, a hole having a small diameter but a depth of about 10 cm is generated by an ablation. If the mine 7 is present at a position where the hole is perforated by the laser beam, the mine 7 is ignited by the beam and treated. Such an operation is conducted while scanning the ground surface in a two-dimensional manner. Thus, a searching treatment of the minefield of the large area and the igniting treatment can be simultaneously conducted to be extremely effective. A radiation and scanning of the laser beam can be conducted by sufficiently remotely separating from the ground surface, and hence a safety mine clearing work can be performed.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a mine disposal device and a method therefor, and more particularly to a mine disposal device and a method for treating an underground mine.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art At present, a great number of land mines are buried underground all over the world. Numerous demining devices have been constructed to find and remove these mines. The main methods are: 1) Finding mines with metal detectors, excavating and processing them. 2) A method of irradiating electromagnetic waves into the ground, detecting them by reflected waves from land mines, excavating them, and processing them. (In some systems, the resolution of the sensor is increased and the shape of the land mines is captured in images.) 3) A method of bombing and treating land mines by physically applying pressure to the ground. 4) A method in which explosives are exploded on the ground surface to induce and treat land mines. It is.

[0003] However, the methods 1) and 2) can be found to some extent if it is a metal mine, but it is difficult to find a plastic mine which has been used recently. The device with improved resolution of 3) can understand the shape of land mines to some extent, but there are more than several hundred types of land mines, and it is difficult to distinguish from land mines such as stones, metal fragments, and wood fragments in the ground. It is difficult to find mines due to the presence of objects. In the actual mine burial area,
In addition to relatively small destructive anti-personnel mines, anti-tank mines with high destructive power are buried in some places.

The method 3) has a great effect on an anti-personnel land mine, but has a drawback that an anti-tank land mine destroys the mine processing device itself. In addition, the method 4) cannot always induce 100% of land mines, and there is a possibility that a major threat remains after the treatment.

[0005] Under such circumstances, a reliable land mine disposal method which is currently the mainstay is a method in which a person crawls and carefully pierces a thin rod into the ground to discover, excavate and dispose of the land mine. Has become.

[0006]

However, this method sometimes causes accidental explosion of land mines, causing death or injury to land miners. In addition, the landmine disposal efficiency is very poor, and the treatment range is about 1 tsubo (3.3 m ² ) / person / day on average. Against this background, there is a strong demand for the development of a mine disposal device that is safe, efficient, and capable of treating 100% of land mines.

Here, with reference to Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 11-23194, there is disclosed a technique for irradiating a detected land mine with laser light to detonate the detected land mine.
However, this method has a drawback that the laser beam is used only for detonation of the mine, and another detection technique is still required for the detection of the mine.

An object of the present invention is to provide a mine disposal apparatus and a method thereof capable of safely and reliably treating a large area minefield in a short time.

[0009]

According to the present invention, there is provided a scanning condensing unit for irradiating an ultra-short pulse and high-energy laser beam while scanning the ground, thereby performing an ignition process for a buried land mine. A mine disposal device characterized by the above feature is obtained.

[0010] The scanning condensing section generates an ultrashort pulse and high energy first laser beam to make a hole in the ground, and then generates a short pulse laser beam to form the hole. Wherein the buried land mine is ignited at a position, and further provided with a shutter portion which is provided at the laser light irradiation exit, opens when the laser light is emitted, and closes at a later time. It is characterized by. Further, it is characterized by including a solar cell as a power supply for operation.

According to the present invention, there is provided a mine disposal method characterized by irradiating an ultra-short pulse and high-energy laser beam onto the ground while scanning the ground to perform an ignition process for a buried mine. .

[0012] Then, a first laser beam of ultra-short pulse and high energy is generated to make a hole in the ground, and then a short pulse laser beam is generated to ignite a buried mine at the position of the hole. Characterized in that, when emitting the laser light, open the laser beam exit shutter,
It is characterized in that the shirt is closed at a later time.

The operation of the present invention will be described. In minefields, mine burial depths that are within 10 cm of the ground surface are overwhelming. Therefore, in the present invention, a laser beam having a short diameter and a depth of about 10 cm is generated by ablation by condensing an ultrashort pulse / high energy laser beam and making the laser beam substantially perpendicular to the ground surface. . If a land mine exists at a position where a hole has been made by the laser light, it is ignited by the laser light and processed. By performing such an operation while scanning two-dimensionally on the ground surface, detection processing and ignition processing of a large area minefield can be performed at the same time, which is extremely effective. In addition, the emission and scanning of the laser beam can be performed by remote control while being sufficiently isolated from the ground surface, and safe mine disposal can be performed.

Further, the laser emission repetition is sufficiently possible up to about 10 pulses / sec. In the future, it is conceivable that the repetition rate will be higher. It is possible. By automatically and indiscriminately irradiating lasers not on local land but on land with unknown burial position, land mine with unknown burying status is automatically performed in a short time on a large area. It becomes possible.

[0015]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is an overall configuration diagram of an embodiment of the present invention. The laser unit 1 is a part that generates an ultrashort pulse / high energy laser. The performance is 1p pulse width
At s to 100 ps (1 ps = 10 ¹² seconds), an energy of 10 to 200 J per pulse is required. The pulse repetition is desirably at least 1 Hz, preferably about 10 Hz.

The scanning condensing unit 2 has a function of receiving an ultrashort pulse laser beam from the laser 1, converting the laser beam into a condensed laser beam 5, and irradiating the laser beam on the ground 8. The light-converging point is assumed to be a place where the light is incident into the ground several cm. The scanning condensing unit 2 is located at a height of at least 1.5 m, preferably 4 m or more from the surface of the ground to reduce the influence of the blast of the processed land mine 7. The scanning condensing unit 2 scans the ground 8 and makes the point where the condensed laser beam 5 is irradiated on the ground as dense as possible so as to prevent the processing of the mine as much as possible. In order to reliably catch land mines, it is necessary to irradiate the ground with the condensed laser light 5 at a pitch of about 2 cm. In that case, it is necessary to fire 2500 times per square meter, but 2Hz
A processing of one square meter is completed in about 21 minutes even at a repetitive firing speed of about. It is desirable that the scanning condensing unit 2 can scan in two axes.

The control unit 3 controls the operation of the entire land mine disposal device. The power generation unit 4 supplies electric power to the laser unit 1, the scanning condensing unit 2, the control unit 3, the movable carriage 6, and the like. The mobile trolley 6 may be supplied with power from another unique power source. The movable trolley 6 carries the above-described laser unit 1, scanning condensing unit 2, control unit 3, power generation unit 4, and the like, and performs movement necessary for minefield processing. The means of movement may be by endless tracks, wheels, or any other suitable means, such as a multi-legged mobile. Reference numeral 7 denotes a buried land mine, which is a processing target of the land mine disposal device of the present invention.

Referring to FIG. 1, the operation of the land mine disposal device of the present invention will be described. The mobile trolley 6 moves the entire mine disposal device to the edge of the minefield that needs to be treated. When moving the entire land mine disposal device for a long distance, it is also conceivable that the mine disposal device is loaded on a trailer or the like and moves. The power generation unit 4 is started to supply power to each unit of the land mine disposal device. The laser unit 1 is operated to generate an ultrashort pulse / high energy laser beam and supply it to the scanning and focusing unit 2.

In accordance with an instruction from the control section 3, the condensing laser beam 5 is emitted from the scanning condensing section 2 to the ground 8. The firing direction is specified by the control unit 3. By emitting a large number of condensed laser beams 5 toward the ground 8 while scanning in a two-dimensional direction, land mines in a planar area are processed.

When a certain area is processed, the mobile trolley 6 moves to process a new area. By repeating the above operation one after another, the processing of the minefield is completed. These operations can be automatically performed by designating an area.

An ultrashort pulse / high energy laser beam is
Light can be collected to a diameter of about 1 mm on the ground. As a typical example, when the pulse width is 10 ps and the energy is 100 J, the maximum power of the laser beam reaches 10 ¹³ W. When this light is condensed into a 1 mm diameter circle, the power density value reaches 1.3 × 10 ¹⁵ W / cm ² , destroying whatever is irradiated and penetrating into the ground . According to the present invention, landmine processing is performed by utilizing such properties of an ultrashort pulse / high energy laser beam.

In the embodiment shown in FIG. 1, the laser beam has an ultra-short pulse and high energy. However, in order to reliably ignite a land mine, the laser beam is converted into a double pulse as shown in FIG. There is. FIG. 2 shows an example thereof.
A hole is drilled in the ground with ultrashort pulse and high energy laser light, and then the inner surface of the hole is heated with the short pulse laser light to ignite the mine. A laser having a pulse width of 1 ns or more is used as the short pulse laser light.

Although not shown in the embodiment shown in FIG.
A method is provided in which a shutter is provided at the exit of the condensed laser beam 5 in the scanning condensing unit 2 and is opened only when the laser is emitted, and then closed to prevent damage to the scanning condensing unit 2 due to an explosion of a mine. . In FIG. 1, the power generation unit 4 can be replaced with a solar cell system provided on the upper surface of the land mine disposal device.

[0024]

According to the present invention, by irradiating the ground while scanning the ground two-dimensionally using an ultra-short pulse and high energy laser beam, the search for a buried land mine and its processing can be performed simultaneously and simultaneously. Since the processing can be surely performed and the processing is performed by laser irradiation, the processing can be performed away from the ground, so that there is an effect that the landmine processing apparatus is not destroyed by the explosion of the landmine. Also, there is an effect that a person engaged in land mine disposal is not hurt. Furthermore, there is also an effect that the mine can be automatically processed after setting the device.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a configuration of an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing an example of a double-pulse laser beam used in another embodiment of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

 DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 Laser part 2 Scanning condensing part 3 Control part 4 Power generation part 5 Laser pulse 6 Moving carriage 7 Landmine 8 Ground

Claims (7)

[Claims] 1. A land mine disposal device comprising a scanning condensing unit for irradiating a ground surface with an ultra-short pulse and high energy laser beam while scanning the ground, and performing an ignition process for a buried land mine. 2. The scanning condensing section generates an ultrashort pulse and high energy first laser beam to make a hole in the ground, and then generates a short pulse laser beam to generate a hole in the hole. The mine disposal device according to claim 1, wherein the burial mine is ignited at the position. 3. The land mine disposal device according to claim 1, further comprising a shutter provided at an irradiation exit of the laser light, opened when the laser light is emitted, and closed at a later time. apparatus. 4. The mine disposal device according to claim 1, further comprising a solar cell as an operation power supply. 5. A land mine disposal method comprising irradiating an ultra-short pulse and high-energy laser beam onto the ground while scanning the ground to ignite a buried land mine. 6. An underground mine is ignited at the position of the hole by generating an ultrashort pulse and high energy first laser beam to make a hole in the ground, and then generating a short pulse laser beam. 6. The mine disposal method according to claim 5, wherein: 7. The mine disposal method according to claim 5, wherein when the laser beam is emitted, the shirt at the laser beam outlet is opened and the shirt is closed for a later time.