Effect of ferromagnetic objects in rubble on rescue beacon searches

Issue title: Proceedings from the 17th International Symposium on Applied Electromagnetics and Mechanics (ISEM 2015)

Guest editors: Fumio Kojima, Futoshi Kobayashi and Hiroyuki Nakamoto

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Nara, Takaaki^* | Takeda, Hirofumi | Ando, Shigeru

Affiliations: Graduate School of Informatioin Science and Engineering, The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo, Japan

Correspondence: [*] Corresponding author: Takaaki Nara, Graduate School of Informatioin Science and Engineering, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1, Hongo, Bunkyo 113-8656, Japan. E-mail:[email protected]

Abstract: In this paper, we propose to use an avalanche beacon with frequency of 457 kHz to search for a rescuer buried in rubble in a secondary earthquake disaster. In an avalanche rescue, a searcher proceeds along the magnetic force lines generated by the victim's beacon, and always reaches the magnetic field `zero point', which is guaranteed to be in the proximity of the victim. In this paper, we show that ferromagnetic objects in rubble do not substantially affect a zero point search by theoretical analyses, numerical simulations, and experiments.

Keywords: Inverse problem, beacon, magnetic dipole, zero point, ferromagnetic objects

DOI: 10.3233/JAE-162194

Journal: International Journal of Applied Electromagnetics and Mechanics, vol. 52, no. 1-2, pp. 61-66, 2016