Correlations of blast damage to ground surface targets with explosion seismic effect

For an explosion resource, to evaluate its damage power to ground surface targets is an important problem. Two direct methods, measuring of air shock wave pressures generated by explosion and experimental observation of simulation target damage, are usually used to appraise this blast damage power. However, the measuring system of air shock wave pressures is not only very complex, but there are some problems to gauge the pressure sensors and the measured pressures often exhibit a strong scatter of data. In a simulation way, the used targets, easily damaged by explosion action, are not used once again so that there is the waste of materials. A measuring system of explosion seismic waves, with the characteristics being stable in operation and convenient to arrange the sensors of seismic waves, cannot be easily damaged in the process of experiment. If the explosion seismic strength is able to reflect the damage effects of explosion resources to ground surface targets, it is possible to suggest a new evaluation method based on the seismic effect, which, to large extent, will overcome the drawbacks of those two methods mentioned above. In this work, the potential of this new method is investigated experimentally. The experimental results show that under the identical ground-layer state and within a definite distance range, it is available to employ the explosion seismic effect to evaluate the damage power of explosion resources to ground surface targets. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.