BLAST WAVES IN INHOMOGENEOUS ATMOSPHERES INCLUDING REAL-GAS AND HEAT-TRANSFER EFFECTS

The real gas and heat transfer effects, particularly at the early stag e of the propagation of a very strong blast wave resulting from a poin t explosion in an atmosphere whose density varies with altitude, are a ddressed by numerical computation. The new twist in this classical bla st wave problem is that the simplistic perfect gas equation of state i s abandoned, and replaced with a set of realistic, albeit approximate equilibrium gas properties, including internal energy for intermolecul ar forces, vibration, excitation of electrons, dissociation, ionisatio n and conductive and radiative heat transfer. The whole complex proble m is then solved by the method of characteristics. The computations ar e carried out for blast waves propagating upward and downward in an is othermal atmosphere. The results are compared with results obtained us ing a perfect gas model. From the comparison it appears that temperatu re profiles and, accordingly, density profiles are affected most by th e real gas.