DEMICHAIN: A New Concept of Mechanical Demining

DEMICHAIN is a new concept for mechanical demining, in which a horizontal web of heavy chains hung several metres above a surface to be cleared is dropped in a free fall and delivers a mechanical impulse over the whole surface hit by the chains. A pressure wave expands in the soil and is expected to trigger the active landmines. A description of the device is given, as well as comparisons to other demining devices. The author offers that DEMICHAIN provides numerous advantages to current mechanical-demining techniques, though it requires further testing before it can be used in real-life situations

Forces Generated by the Free Fall of DEMICHAIN

The free fall of an array of heavy chains (360 kg/sq m) generates extensive pressure in the depth of the ground. These pressures have been measured and compared to the threshold pressures that trigger anti-personnel landmines. When dropped from moderate heights (1 m), chains can generate enough pressure to set off active landmines buried 20 cm, provided that the area of their pressure plates is larger than a few square centimeters

Chimiluminescence infrarouge de l’oxyde de carbone excité par l’azote activé

La relaxation de l’émission infrarouge des mélanges de l’azote actif avec CO a été étudiée, en s’attachant à l’examen des niveaux de v = 2 à v = 20. Les populations des niveaux de vibration sont déterminées à partir de l’intensité mesurée des spectres à faible résolution. On constate que la répartition de population vibrationnelle de CO devient rapidement non Boltzmanienne et que, due à l’émission de rayonnement, la vitesse globale de désexcitation du milieu est élevée. Les récentes théories concernant la relaxation d’oscillateurs anharmoniques semblent devoir contribuer à l’interprétation de nos observations

BOILING OF ORGANIC LIQUIDS INDUCED BY BULK ABSORPTION OF CO2 LASER RADIATION

Lorsque du cyclohexane est chauffé en profondeur par absorption de rayonnement laser CO2, le changement de phase liquide-vapeur s'effectue par un processus d'ébullition. Suivant l'homogénéité du matériau, l'ébullition peut être régulière ou d'allure explosive. Des Températures plus élevées que la température normale de vaporisation se développent au sein du liquide.When cyclohexane is heated in depth by the absorption of CO2 laser radiation, its liquid to vapour phase change occurs by a boiling process. According to the homogeneity of the liquid phase, the boiling may be regular or explosive-like. Temperatures higher than the equilibrium vaporization temperature develop in the bulk of the liquid

A virtual visit to the Collegiate Church St. Peter and Alexander, Aschaffenburg

Next year Germany celebrates the Romanesque year. For this celebration one of the oldest and best conserved churches in Germany, the collegiate church St. Peter and Alexander, will be virtually reconstructed in three epochs: Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque. The aim of the reconstruction is to mediate the history of the church and encourage people to visit the actual site. Because of the large amount of data of the virtual reconstruction, it is hard to publish the resultant models in the World Wide Web. Compression and simplification techniques are needed to reduce the complexity of the model. In this paper, we propose a feature based simplification method to generate a useful graphical abstraction of the model. At the end of the paper, we discuss some of our work in progress, which can be used to augment the real site with the virtual reconstruction during a tourist s visit of the church