Investigations of shield effect and type of soil on landmine detection

This paper investigates the possibility of optimizing the performance of the neutron backscattering method in landmine detection by designing a suitable shield around a 252Cf neutron source to reduce the background due to soil and the neutrons emitted from the source that hit the detector directly. A series of Monte Carlo simulations were performed to improve the source shield thickness and to study the elastically backscattered (EBS) 252Cf neutrons from the buried explosive material TNT in the soil; the optimal configuration was examined against different soil types and source heights. The results obtained in terms of performance of the relative (EBS) neutrons confirmed that the proposed source shield has significantly improved the signal to background ratio. Higher signal-to-background ratio was observed using 252Cf neutron source as compared to Pu–Be source.