Statistical Variations in Blast Loads from Buried Explosives

Abstract

Five nominally identical blast-loading tests were conducted where dynamic deflection data was collected. The dynamic deformation data collected was of the upper surface of a blastloaded hull shape. This data allowed the determination of the initial velocity imparted to each point of the surface in the first 1 or 2 milliseconds of the blast event. Analysis of this data showed that the spatial variation of the normalized blast loading is small, in particular it is less than 5%. Larger variations occur for the total blast impulse. Thus, the spatial distribution of the blast event (when normalized by the initial impulse) has less variation and is more repeatable than the actual total impulse of a blast event.