THE EFFECT OF PLASTICITY ON DECOUPLING OF UNDERGROUND EXPLOSIONS

Technical Report · Tue Nov 22 04:00:00 EST 1960

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/4054285· OSTI ID:4054285

Latter, A L; Martinelli, E A; Mathews, J; McMillan, W G

The effect of plasticity, including work hardening, on decoupling underground explosions was studied both for cavities designed to give full decoupling according to the Geneva specification (70 cubic meters per ton of explosive energy) as well as small, overdriven cavities designed to give partial decoupling. An important result is that plasticity plays no role whatsoever for fulldecoupling cavities, even those at great depth in which some plastic flow occurs during construction of the cavity. For overdriven cavities at great depth plasticity affects the decoupling factor by an amount which depends upon the degree of overdriving and the depth as well as the detainled stress-strain curve of the medium. A further result of the study is that for cavities at a depth of about one kilometer and in a medium like salt, which exhibits a reasonable amount of work hardening, the decoupling factor will be at least as great as that obtained in the overdriven Cowboy experiments and could be appreciably greater. To obtain more quantitative conclusions better stress-strain data are needed for loading conditions appropriate to the decoupling problem. Plastic flow associated with pressure transients was ignored here, but should be examined. (auth)

• Research Organization: RAND Corp., Santa Monica, Calif.
• Sponsoring Organization: US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC)
• NSA Number: NSA-15-014051
• OSTI ID: 4054285
• Report Number(s): RM-2665-AEC
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

DEFORMATION
DUCTILITY
GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
PLASTICITY
STRESSES
UNDERGROUND EXPLOSIONS