LABORATORY EXPLOSIVE TESTING AT SMALL SCALE

Small scale testing has proved very useful in exploring the details of buried charge target loading mechanisms. If the target is of reasonable size relative to the charge, the target is loaded in two steps or phases. It has been possible to gain insight into the density distribution in the soil cap that provides the first phase of the target loading. This is expected to be quite useful in validating computational models of the loading. The actual load on a target by the explosion of a buried charge has a significant non-deterministic element. Small scale testing enables one to run enough nominally identical tests to develop sound estimates of the nondeterministic part of the target loading. It appears that both the mean and the standard deviation of this loading are scalable to other charge sizes.