Time-Dependent Buoyant Puff Rise due to Buried Explosions

The detonation of explosives can lead to the release of small harmful particles in the atmosphere that may have adverse effects on the environment and human. The dispersion of these particles starts with the detonation of the explosive material leading to the apparition of a fireball and initial cloud or puff. This cloud expands due to diffusion and turbulence and rises until it reaches its maximum or effective height due to buoyancy, momentum, atmospheric turbulence and horizontal wind speed. This effective height is an important parameter required for passive dispersion stage. Many numerical and semi-empirical models have been developed to predicts the cloud height for open detonations and not for buried detonations due to lack of experimental data. In this paper, experiment results of the detonation of explosives $29.2 kg$ to $49.2 kg$ TNT equivalent were presented and a new semi-empirical model was formulated to predict puff height evolution in time. However, due to the lack of explosion magnitude data and atmospheric temperature profile, the functional form of the new model could not determined yet. More experiments will be carried out.