Type of effect
Most of this stuff is from the Journal of Hazardous Materials, A74 (2000) 149-161.
Associated with the detonation of an explosive is a fireball. In general, the dimension of the fireball is given by:
Where W is the weight of the explosive in pounds and D is the diameter of the fireball in feet. So, for example, if there is an explosion of 10 pounds there will be a fireball of diameter 18.64 feet. This does not seem to match well with my experiments. My results indicate much smaller fireballs. In fact, unless there is some effort put into making a fireball there is none. But that could be because my explosives use ammonium nitrate as their principle ingredient which is typically a very 'cool' explosive.
Trees are sensitive to drag forces, such as wind from the blast wave. Broad leaf trees are more sensitive than coniferous trees. The ground drainage, soil type, tree girth, etc. are also big variables. There are also different levels of damage, these have been characterized as:
I have no experience with trees, however the result on grass and small brush seems to compare well with these numbers.
The size of the craters formed depends on the soil type (soft, hard, sandy, clay, rocky, etc.) and the position of the explosive compared to ground level. The following equation is for the explosive touching the ground at the time of detonation.
This appears to match my results very closely.
This is due to the brick and concrete 'throw' from an explosive magazine. The fragmentation effects from a steel magazine are less than for brick and concrete structures. This doesn't take into account a lot of variables such as how much air space in the magazine (loading density), details of magazine construction, the effects of the blast wave (lung hemorrhage for example), and lots of other stuff. But it's a rough estimate.
This is from http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-048.htm
The pressure appears to be the overpressure in PSI, but I am unable to find confirmation of that. The lethal dose (50%) for large animals varies from about 50 to 200 PSI depending on the species and duration of the overpressure. For small animals it is 30 to 80 PSI, again depending on the species and duration.
Email: Joe Huffman