Home – Home – Jornals – Combustion, Explosion and Shock Waves 2025 number 6

To study the effect of initial ambient pressure on the explosion parameters of thermobaric explosives (HE), static explosion experiments were conducted using trinitrotoluene (TNT) as a reference at both low and high initial ambient pressures. Various grades of thermobaric explosives were tested, and a correlation model was proposed for analyzing the overpressure and momentum of the blast shock wave in different initial environments, taking into account atmospheric pressure. Analysis of the pressure data showed that the general propagation and attenuation characteristics of blast shock waves from TNT and thermobaric explosives are essentially the same at different initial ambient pressures. As the initial ambient pressure decreases, both the shock wave overpressure and momentum decrease. The explosion propagation velocity also decreases with decreasing initial ambient pressure. Furthermore, as the explosive mass increases, the reduction in overpressure and momentum decreases for both thermobaric explosives and TNT, and the difference in the shock wave propagation velocities from these two types of explosives also decreases. A comparison of the correlation model results with experimental data yielded average maximum relative errors of 12.3% for TNT and 8.8% for thermobaric explosives in low-pressure environments relative to the shock wave overpressure. Momentum errors were 12% for TNT and 13.7% for thermobaric explosives. These results demonstrate the high accuracy of the correlation model. This correlation model allows one to determine the shock wave overpressure and momentum of an explosion at various initial ambient pressures, and to estimate the shock wave power generated by thermobaric explosives.