Press Release

U of S News

U of S Engineer Awarded $605,000 to Study Clearing of Land Mines

Organization: University of Saskatchewan Communications
Email: [email protected]
Released: Apr. 25, 2002

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - April 25, 2002                               2002-04-18-ENG 

U of S Engineer Awarded $605,000 to Study Clearing of Land Mines

How do you clear buried landmines without hurting anyone? And how can you tell when it's safe for certain types of military equipment to travel over war-torn lands without setting off these deadly hidden explosives? 

Finding answers to these questions could save untold numbers of lives in war-ravaged countries - nearly 26,000 people are maimed and killed every year by landmines. Now a University of Saskatchewan engineering professor is closing in on the answers and his efforts could make U of S a national centre for landmine clearing research. Professor Lal Kushwaha of the department of agricultural and bioresource engineering  will receive a total of $605,000 over five years from NSERC and the federal Department of National Defence (DND) to develop efficient and cost-effective machines for clearing landmines.

Kushwaha will also develop a computer model to analyze the risk to various kinds of military vehicles that travel where landmines have been planted. The model assesses the level of pressure required to trigger mines at various depths in the soil. Pressure-activated landmines are considered a very real threat to the movement of Canadian Force personnel and vehicles. As well, landmines are a major impediment to re-settlement and economic reconstruction in many countries. 

At present, landmines have to be cleared manually which is a slow, labor-intensive, high-risk and expensive process. A few prototype machines have been designed elsewhere but they're complicated to build and therefore prohibitively expensive. 

An expert in soil-machine interaction, Kushwaha was approached two years ago by DND to investigate pressure required to activate landmines and to design a de-mining machine. Under this contract, he has developed a prototype of a remote-controlled machine that moves across the soil detonating any landmines that it encounters, yet not undergoing damage itself.

The machine will be tested on simulated landmines at the CFB Suffield research and training base in Alberta this summer, he said. If tests prove successful, the machine could be manufactured for use in countries such as Afghanistan, Bosnia and Cambodia.

"Every country is working on this but I think this machine will be ahead of the pack," said Kushwaha. "We now want to develop new designs that are simpler and more adept at dealing with different types of landmines."

The work will be done in consultation with Vikram Shankhla of the Neutralization Protection Group, Defence RandD Canada - Suffield.

NSERC(www.nserc.ca) will provide $405,000, while DND (http://www.forces.ca/) will provide $200,000. This funding will support up to eight graduate students over the five years, he said.

The U of S could become a national centre for testing of de-mining machines. The engineering college already has a "soil bin" and related special equipment for testing agricultural machines. DND has agreed to spend another $150,000 to move its "terra-mechanics rig" from CFB Suffield to U of S and install and upgrade the equipment, provided that space can be found on campus to house the two testing facilities together.   

"Our soil bin would complement the Suffield facility because theirs tests larger machines and ours tests smaller ones," Kushwaha said. "The U of S would become a centre for landmine clearing study and other countries will come here to do their research as well."   

He stresses that land mines are an enormous problem worldwide. It's estimated that roughly 100 million landmines are scattered over more than 60 countries.

"Even if no more land mines were laid anywhere in the world, it would take 100 years just to clear up all the land mines that have been laid so far," he said.

There are an estimated more than 350 different kinds of anti-personnel mines. Kushwaha notes that certain types of land mines can be set off by human motion, others by military vehicles carrying soldiers, and still others by heavy tanks.

Last December, Kushwaha travelled to Bangkok to learn first-hand what some of the problems are in clearing landmines.

Canada was the first of 124 countries to sign the 1997 Ottawa Convention, a treaty that bans anti-personnel landmines. Canada pledged $100 million over five years to a global effort to rid the world of buried landmines.

For more information, contact:

Prof. Lal Kushwaha  College of EngineeringUniversity of Saskatchewan Phone: 

Kathryn Warden Research CommunicationsUniversity of Saskatchewan Phone: