Ground shock from the detonation of buried explosives

Abstract

Abstract New nonlinear empirical relationships are given for predicting peak radial soil particle velocity and maximum radial displacement at various standoff distances from buried chemical and nuclear explosive detonations. Experimental test data in soil and rock, and for yields ranging from 0.03 pounds (0.01 kg) of explosive to blast yields of 19.2 kilotons (17.5 kilotonnes), are used to demonstrate the validity of these results. The scaled energy releases W / πc 2 R 3 range over nine orders of magnitude in this study from approximately 4.4 × 10 −11 to 4.4 × 10 −2 ; whereas, previous efforts generally covered three orders of magnitude. A soil impedence term is added to handle the troublesome problem of nondimensionalized displacements and particle velocities scaling for different soils. The paper ends by presenting a few nondimensionalized test results which can be used to predict ground motions from buried line explosive sources, an area of little previous discussion.