How soil changes the danger of a buried IED – new research

What happens when a bomb explodes? A lot of testing has been done over the years to answer that question about huge bombs, but there is much less understanding when it comes to small bombs – especially when they are buried.

This is despite the fact that improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, kill and maim about 17,000 people each year, and over the last decade, 273 British service personnel have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan by enemy forces using these bombs.

To gain a better understanding of what happens when an IED explodes, a team of researchers from University of Sheffield and Dstl set up their own unique “blast lab” and discovered that the soil IEDs are buried in is almost as important as what the explosive is made from.