Glossary of terms

Blast focus - The way the earth in which an IED or land mine is placed, acts to focus the blast impulse vertically upwards.

IED - Improvised Explosive Device, typically deployed as a land mine.

  Typical land mine.

Land mine - A land mine is an explosive device designed to be placed in the ground, and set to explode when triggered by an operator or the proximity of the target, typically a vehicle.

Square Cube Law - This is a physical law, first described by Galileo, that explains why as a structure grows in size, its volume (and therefore weight) grows faster than its area. When applied in practice this has many implications which are important in fields ranging from mechanical engineering to biomechanics. And explains why smaller structures are stronger, and have a better performance to weight ratio, than larger structures.

  Typical ‘V-hull’ vehicle.

V-hull - The V-hull is a solution to land mine, or IED, protection where the whole cab of a vehicle is lifted above a V shaped hull shield, which tends to make the whole vehicle heavy, and unstable.

  VSS seat model

VSS - The V-Shaped Shield seat is a solution to land mine, or IED, protection where only the seat is protected. This provides protection, and at the same time keeps the vehicle light and stable. And it can be retro-fitted to conventional vehicles without extensive modification.

Whipple Shield - This is a form of stand off armour invented by Fred Whipple, which consists of a relatively thin outer bumper placed a certain distance off the main armour. This improves the shielding to mass ratio compared to monolithic armour, and because of this it is often used in space craft. The way it works is by the application of a shock by the standoff bumper to incoming particles which causes them to disintegrate, an in so doing spreads out the impulse over a larger area of the main armour.