MU engineers working to develop pulse power for disabling explosives

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Pulse power could be the next great innovation in defense technology.

A team of University of Missouri engineers have started a project funded by the Department of Defense to develop pulse power -- compressed, short bursts of electricity -- to identify and disable hidden explosives during wartime.

The $3 million project, headed by MU engineering professor Randy Curry, would advance technology that would concentrate about 250,000 volts of electricity inside a capacitor and discharge it in bursts that last nanoseconds, essentially firing a bolt of lightning at the explosive device.

"It's the equivalent of six power plants," said Curry, who formerly worked for defense contractors before joining MU a decade ago. "The peak power here is very, very high."

Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., whose son, Sam, is a Marine, secured money for the project in an earmark to a defense-spending bill signed into law in October. The university announced the federal funds last week, though construction on a 6,000-square-foot building to house the project was completed last month.

The MU team, made up of mathematicians, along with civil, mechanical and electrical engineers, will work with undergraduate students and Boeing's Advanced Global Strike Systems division during the next two to three years to develop a prototype or a fully-working unit.

The current pulse-power unit at MU measures about 12 feet by three feet, so the next step will be to make the applications smaller.

Pulse-power technology is currently used in LASIK eye surgery and spider vein removal. Future civilian applications include increasing yield from ethanol by treating grain with pulse bursts and culling energy from seawater, according to Curry.

It's unclear yet how the device will work in a wartime situation, though it's possible it could be mounted on a Humvee and used to disable improvised explosive devices.

"This is a big problem for our country where one of the weapons terrorists are using are these IEDs, and they're a very difficult problem because they're random," said MU Dean of Engineering Jim Thompson. "So to develop a technology to find ... and eliminate these IEDs is extraordinarily important to the defense of this country."