Detection of Deeply Buried UXO Using CPT Magnetometers

The location and identification of unexploded ordnance (UXO) from magnetometer measurements have long been an area of active research interest. Ground surface methods, which are widely used for objects buried in shallow depths, become ineffective for objects deep in the soil because the object´s anomalous field diminishes rapidly with distance, and interference by metal debris on the ground surface is significant. For the location and identification of deeply buried UXO, a total-field magnetometer equipped with a cone penetrometer technology (CPT) drilling system is employed in this paper. A novel inversion method is developed to extract information from individual and multiple CPT profiles. Compared with conventional inversion methods providing a single minimum as an estimate, this approach tests the likelihood distribution over the anticipated solution space, hence providing reliability. Real-world data are collected from a test site for the location and identification of a specific target. All experiments and simulations demonstrate the superior capability of this technique in solving real-world problems when only limited data points are available