Surface burst explosions.

[Jobbo]

I was testing a few things with this calculator and I noticed that optimized airburst explosions always produce explosions roughly 1.3x larger than a surface burst, and to produce an explosion of equivalent size via surface burst you'd need nearly 2.2x (1.3^3) more energy.

The airburst setting produces the same results as our own formula, so I think any surface explosions calculated by this formula should be multiplied by 2.2.

 

[Jobbo]

I believe this would probably also produce similar results to the other explosion equation Antoniofer suggested a while ago.

 

[LephyrTheRevanchist]

You should contact some calc group members.

 

[Jobbo]

Just did a little test and the results aren't exact. A 100 kiloton explosion in the calculator produces a 1.3 km explosion whereas you need 112 kilotons to get 1.3 km from the new formula, so it seems there's a difference. The new formula is supposed to be a surface formula so I wonder why it's only 12% higher than the airburst formula.

Edit: Actually it looks like I ****** up the pressure value in Antoniofer's equation. Using the bar equivalent of 20 psi I get 176 kilotons which is more reasonable, but still considerably lower than the nuke calculator's result.