Shooting range | EPFL Graph Search

A shooting range, firing range, gun range or shooting ground is a specialized facility, venue, or field designed specifically for firearm usage qualifications, training, practice, or competitions. Some shooting ranges are operated by military or law enforcement agencies, though the majority of ranges are privately owned by civilians and sporting clubs and cater mostly to recreational shooters. Each facility is typically overseen by one or more supervisory personnel, known as a Range Officer (RO), or sometimes a range master in the United States. Supervisory personnel are responsible for ensuring that all safety rules and relevant laws are followed at all times. Shooting ranges can be indoor or outdoor, and may be restricted to certain types of firearm that can be used such as handguns or long guns, or they can specialize in certain Olympic disciplines such as trap/skeet shooting or 10 m air pistol/rifle. Most indoor ranges restrict the use of high-power calibers, rifles, or fully automatic firearms. A shooting gallery is a recreational shooting facility with toy guns (usually very low-power airguns such as BB guns or airsoft guns, occasionally light guns or even water guns), often located within amusement parks, arcades, carnivals or fairgrounds, to provide safe casual games and entertainment for the visiting crowd by prizing customers with various dolls, toys and souvenirs as trophies. In urban areas, most shooting ranges will be at indoor facilities. Indoor ranges offer sheltering from inclement weather conditions and can be operated around the clock under a controlled environment. Outdoor shooting ranges are typically found away from populated areas due to concerns of safety, noise pollution and soil contamination. Indoor shooting ranges are usually constructed as standalone structures, though they may be housed in larger buildings in isolated areas such as the basement. The basic components of most indoor ranges consist of firing lines/lanes, targets and a bullet trap/"backstop" (which prevents stray shots and overpenetrations).

Elaboration d'outils pour l'investigation et l'assainissement des stands de tirs

Bruno Chappuis

Switzerland has about 6,000 shooting ranges, of which 2,000 are still in use. These activities generate a significant lead pollution. FOEN estimated 200 tons of lead is fired each year. This Master Project has been realized with the consultancy office CSD Ingénieurs Conseils SA in Lausanne. The project is divided into three parts related to investigations and remediation of shooting ranges. Eleven shooting ranges of the army and two communal shooting ranges have formed the field study of this project. On these sites, 20 samples were taken for laboratory analysis. Nearly 350 field tests with a portable X-ray fluorescence (XRF) were also performed. The first part of the study focused on sample preparation methods. Based on several assumptions, they often give conflicting results. It has been shown that not taking into account the size fraction between 1 cm and 2 mm leads to underestimating the lead concentration by 10% on average. Taking into account the bullets, and how, is even more important. The original content of lead in standard military bullets is 74% of the weight. A common use is to assume this content for the bullets found in soils samples. The lead content measured in bullets is from 64% for those in good shape to 17% for fragments. Lead seems to spread more easily than the steel jacket of the bullets. These results are of major importance for the calculation of the lead content of samples. A strong correlation between lead and bullet amount in soils has not been found. The condition of the bullets seemed to be a significant factor, but the representativeness of the samples was not sufficient due too few mass samples. Taking into account these results, a preparation method was proposed. The second part of the study concern leachate analysis. In particular, OSites leachate and OTD1 (acid) leachate was studied. These leachates are used respectively for polluted sites risk assessment and for choosing treatment solution of excavated materials. Correlations were looked for, between concentrations in leachate and soils parameters. CEC, clay content, organic carbon content and aquous pH has been used as soils parameters. Leachate OTD1 (neutral) has been preferred to leachate Osites for economic reasons, these two tests provide similar results for lead. Good correlations were obtained with non-linear models taking into account all the soils parameters. Models based only on the lead content and aqueous pH (better correlation) give interesting results, but have greater error. The third part focused on the study of geostatistics shooting ranges with fixed targets. Variogram were made from field measurements. A metric sampling grid metric was used. The variogram showed a remedy made from a range of 3 meters. Although the site shows a clear anisotropy, an isotropic spherical variogram with nugget effect has been adjusted. The data were insufficient to fit an anisotropic model. Calculations showed that the kriging interpolation provides better results than those obtained with conventional interpolation. The study also showed that the uncertainty of the kriging interpolation decreases when the mesh sampling is lower. An optimum between accuracy and number of tests could not be found, because the variogram used has too much variability. The results are very promising and will continue to be worked out in order to produce the means of zoning and estimate for the remediation of shooting range.

2009

Elaboration d'outils pour l'investigation et l'assainissement des stands de tirs

Bruno Chappuis

2009