Explosion of a body in flight

Abstract

Little attention has been paid up to now in the theory of explosions to such an important and interesting problem as the explosion of a body in flight. A formulation of the problem presented by such an explosion in connection with the problem of simulating the explosion of a meteorite body flying at cosmic velocity is given in [1]. In this case the kinetic energy of the translational motion may be comparable to or even in excess of the internal energy of the explosive transformation, which will lead to a significant distortion of the flow pattern compared with the usual explosion process. An analysis of the effect of the initial velocity of particles on the course of an explosion in idealized formulations in the framework of one-dimensional flows with plane, cylindrical, and spherical waves was first made in [2–4]. The asymptotic flow properties were found in these papers. It is shown that if the internal energy E_o and the kinetic energy K_o are separated (the specification of the latter for a fixed mass is equivalent to specification of the initial momentum), some intermediate self-similar regimes corresponding to a short pulse [2] or to flows with a sink [3, 4] are observed, these becoming the solution for a strong explosion at long times [1]. The time of transition from one qualitative regime to another depends on the ratio K_o/E_o. In the present paper the next step in the investigation of the question is taken. An axisymmetric, basically realistic flow model is studied.