Acoustic Monitor for Buried Structure Detection

We propose to apply a non-intrusive embedded acoustic sensor concept, which has been used successfully in reentry vehicle aerodynamics applications for detecting exterior flow conditions to penetrator munitions for detecting various media and buried structures during penetration. This effort includes: review of existing data and literature to choose promising signal characteristics for media and buried structure discrimination; design and fabrication of prototype sensors; laboratory characterization of the prototypes against various high speed frictional inputs; and finally (with government cooperation) a field test of an instrumented sub-scale penetrator. This effort is part of a coordinated Phase I/Phase II development which will greatly enhance the performance of penetrator munitions.