Modeling emitted IR radiations

Because it is impossible to control the IR environment (position of the sun, sky radiance, air temperature, background reflections and emissions, etc), it has been decided to design a simple model that gives information on the temperature evolution on the surface of the ground above anti-personnel mines and its surroundings in order to be able to answer questions like ``why, when, where and which thermal IR sensors to use ?''. Only thermal conduction has been analyzed. The model is based on the general equation of heat conduction with specific assumptions (symmetry, simplified shapes, constant parameters, etc). A numerical model, based on a finite volume method, has been developed in Excel and can be very easily modified for a set of different parameters such as mine shape, soil type and depth. This work was done by the ULB with support of the RMA and the VUB (see [7] and [8]).