Explosive impulse on plates

This paper describes a series of very small scale model tests that were conducted in support of a full scale test program conducted by the Army Research Laboratory at Aberdeen, Maryland for the US Navy to investigate the impulse delivered to a military vehicle by a buried land mine. The full scale tests were conducted in July of 2004 and investigated the effect of various parameters on the impulse delivered. The vehicle was represented by a steel plate and depth of burial, standoff distance, and explosive size (up to 10 pounds of TNT) were changed in the seven tests conducted for the Navy. The full scale tests were conducted in saturated sand. The tests described in this paper used a maximum charge size of 3.3 gm of RDX and PETN. Each of the tests conducted for the Navy were simulated by the small scale tests and a prediction of the impulse that would be measured for each of the tests was made. The small scale tests (as well as the full scale tests results) were also used by the developers of various nume...