Blast Overpressure Studies. Part II: Nonauditory Damage-Risk Assessment forSimulated Weapons Fired 100 Times from an Enclosure

摘要

Anesthetized sheep were exposed to a reverberant wave environment like thatproduced from firing an antitank weapon from a room. The simulation was accomplished by detonating C4 explosives outside a chamber of 18.2 m3 volume. The blast wave traveled into the chamber through a 20-cm I.D. tube and was reflected off the back wall and subsequently throughout the chamber. The resulting waveform very closely approximated that generated by a Carl-Gustav antitank weapon fired from a chamber. Part I of the studies indicated that for a series of 1 shot or 3 shots, 2.5 minutes apart, multiple shots have a strong additive effect, decreasing the subthreshold levels. The subthreshold for a single blast was estimated to be above a peak of 48 kPa. The subthreshold for 3 exposures was estimated to be at 44 kPa. This study, called Part II, used 100 shots, 1 minute apart. For this exposure, a subthreshold peak of at least 23 kPa was verified using 19 animals.