Numerical Simulation of Quarry Blast Sources

Abstract

Quarry blast sources are developed based on well-documented blasting practices from decades of blasting in quarries and used to simulate seismic signals from quarry blasts, and to examine the 'hide-in-quarry blast' scenario for evading detection of nuclear weapons testing. Blasting is designed to break rock through spallation, and the resultant spall is an important part of the quarry blast source. The quarry blast source models include the finite size of the source, the effect of ripple firing (time delays and spatial separation), the effect of net vertical and horizontal rock movement, and the relative excitation of the explosion and spall sources. We simulate the 'hide-in-quarry blast' scenario as an overburied nuclear explosion beneath the quarry blast. We find that for a one kiloton quarry blast source: The quarry blast source is band-limited compared to the buried explosion, and decays rapidly over the 0.5- 3, Hz frequency band.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 1993
Accession Number
ADA265517

Entities

People

  • J. L. Stevens
  • K. L. Mclaughlin
  • T. G. Barker

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Arrays
  • Bandwidth
  • Classification
  • Detection
  • Dwell Time
  • Excitation
  • Explosions
  • Explosive Charges
  • Explosives
  • Frequency
  • Frequency Bands
  • Materials
  • Nuclear Explosions
  • Nuclear Weapons
  • Radiation
  • Rayleigh Waves
  • Weapons

Readers

  • Acoustical Oceanography.
  • Explosive Engineering.
  • Geotechnical Engineering.