Scaling law for the elastic response of spherical explosion-containment vessels

The substantial progress made in the development of portable, spherical explosion-containment vessels has led to its adoption for explosives-related transporting and manufacturing. A simple scaling law for engineering-design use has been obtained for the maximum first-cycle elastic-strain response to explosive loading by a centered, spherical charge of a representative high explosive known as Pentolite. Results from a computer program based on the work of Baker have been accurately fitted to a six-product power law that is a function of the density, elastic modulus, diameter, and thickness of the vessel and the weight of detonated explosive. Nonlinear and log-linear fits are compared and found to agree if the role of weighting factors is understood. An impulse approximation is used to indicate that the scaling-law parameters are reasonable.