The Influence of Soil Air-Void Fraction and Water Content on Momentum Transfer from Explosive Charges Buried in a Lean Clay

Author(s):

Collin R Pecora, William L Fourney, Ulrich H Leiste, Leslie C Taylor, and David M Fox

Abstract:

A series of experiments were conducted to quantify impulsive response of flat target plates subjected to detonation of explosive charges shallowly buried in a lean clay. The aim of this research is to correlate impulse delivered as a function of predetonative soil state derived from a three-phase soil model. Primary focus is on impulsive response as a function of the soil’s air-volume fraction and water content, but other soil state parameters are explored. This work used scaled mine-blast experiments where target mass, target presented area, charge mass, charge aspect ratio, soil type, depth of burial, and energetic source to target distance were held constant while only the soil’s water content and the amount of compaction effort used to construct the soil bed were varied. The results show a strong correlation between impulse delivered and air-volume fraction, and for a given air-volume fraction, greater impulse is delivered for soil with higher water content.