Determining the extent to which sources of aluminum (Al) powders, often used as fuel in improvised explosive devices (IEDs), can be differentiated is important for forensic investigations and gathering intelligence.
Previous work developed effective methods of characterizing Al powders using micromorphometric features of the Al particles and a multistage sampling approach. Since then, ~100 additional samples from Al powder sources representing five powder types used in IEDs and 33 product distributors have been added to the dataset. Using this large dataset, a study confirmed that 200 randomly selected fields of view (FOV) are needed to accurately characterize the powder.
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Source: Wiley Online Library
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