Fieldable Optical Sensors for Physically Characterizing High Energy Explosion Fireballs

Diagnostics and instrumentation is needed to evaluate the effectiveness of the next generation of technology to defeat chemical and biological weapons.This proposal addresses the need for instrumentation to quantify the spatial and temporal evolution of fundamental physical and chemical processes, such as temperature and species identification and concentration, pertinent to the pyrolytic destruction of large quantities of chemical and biological agents via a high-explosive fireball.Such understanding will translate into optimization of the design and deployment of high-explosive defeat weapons in order to reduce the risk to civilian populations from release of chemical or biological agents into the environment. Spectral Sciences, Inc. (SSI), in collaboration with the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT), propose to develop a Fieldable Fireball In-situ and Remote Emission Spectroscopy Sensor Suite (F2IRES3).This includes the development and field deployment of remote and in-situ optical combustion monitors, data acquisition and analysis algorithms, and development of physics based spectral models for both the atmospheric and high-temperature multi-phase environments which are needed for simulating fireball measurements and developing fireball properties retrieval algorithms.