Page 415 - AWSAR 2.0

Saving Our Saviours from an Avalanche
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Mr. Rahul Sheoran*
Email: 27sheoran@gmail.com
The crown of the Indian peninsula, the Great Himalayas, is home to one of the largest number of avalanches prone routes in the world. The snowfall and weather patterns in this part of our country can be described as strange, to say the least. As the Indian Army covers a large part of this area due to the border conditions with our neighbours, a major risk factor faced by the troops is that of the potential avalanche activity on their tracks, which has caused a loss of life and equipment several times in the past. Therefore, providing them with holistic and dependable information about the condition of snowpack on the slope will greatly help in eliminating the risk of casualties during the transit.
The Snow and Avalanche Study Establishment lab of Defence R&D
Organisation has been working on the forefront to provide avalanche warning and control in this area since the last half-century. In the last decade, the technology and the quality of device fabrication have reached such a high level that acoustic sensors (piezoelectric) are now able to capture the vibration energy of micro-fractures in the snowpack. A piezoelectric crystal has the property of generating a potential difference (charge separation) in response to the applied pressure. This potential difference (voltage) is amplified, transmitted and then recorded in a data acquisition) system in a digital format. From here, the data are transferred to a computer for further processing and storage. The recorded variations of voltage provide us with various parameters (aspects) to study the
* Mr. Rahul Sheoran, PhD Scholar from Department of Physics, Panjab University, Punjab, is pursuing his research on “Acoustic Emissions Study of Snow to Quantify Instability”. His popular science story entitled “Saving our Saviours from Avalanche” has been selected for AWSAR Award.