Improving Chemical Protective Capabilities of Silicon and Ethylene Propylene Diene Rubber (EPDM) Class Rubber Materials

The proliferation of biological weapons among rogue nations and terrorist organizations necessitates that the U.S. develop the means of detecting deployment of these weapons in battlefield, base and civilian settings. Portable and affordable remotesensors that give U.S. forces several minutes warning of approaching threats are necessary so that troops have adequate time to take appropriate protective measures. Compact, eyesafe coherent Doppler lidars have been demonstrated as able to providesearch/detect/track functions for biological defense. Importantly, these sensors are significantly smaller and lighter than competing active sensor technologies due to the much greater sensitivity of heterodyne, relative to direct, detection lidars.Additionally, these lidars provide volumetric, range-resolved, wind field measurements to ranges exceeding 20 km. Ancillary benefits include providing input to plume dispersion models to provide accurate forecasting of plume tracks and integrated exposuremapping. This can result in reduced contamination of mobile assets, minimization of personnel exposure, optimization of decontamination resources and minimization of the time needed to restore operations. In this effort, CTI proposes integrating (1) aDoppler lidar for aerosol search/detect/and track functions and wind velocity measurements with (2) a plume dispersion and hazard assessment model to provide a capability for downwind hazard prediction and (3) a multi-pronged BW agent discriminationtechnique. Applications include tactical surveillance for chem/bio defense, battlefield smoke and cloud transport and structure model development and validation, fence-line monitoring of industrial facilities, turbulence statistics and turbulent transportmodeling for meteorological research, and airport terminal area weather surveillance.