File:Blastcurves 1.png

• Description: Overpressure ranges from 1 to 50 PSI of a 1 kiloton air burst as a function of burst height. The thin black curve indicates the optimum burst height for a given ground range.
• Author: SiriusB
• Sources: Plotted with Gnuplot. Isobars are based on numerically solved formulae from the internal help pages of the BLAST software, the H_opt curve is an analytical fit using the inversely plotted formula

${\displaystyle {{\mathit {GR}}_{\mathit {OP}} \over \mathrm {m} }=\left(\left(9{,}54\cdot 10^{-3}\,{H_{\mathit {OP}} \over \mathrm {m} }^{1{,}95}\right)^{4}+\left(3{,}01\,{H_{\mathit {OP}} \over \mathrm {m} }^{0{,}75}\right)^{4}\right)^{1/4}\,.}$

This function should fit both BLAST output and Figures 3.73a-c taken from Glasstone, Dolan, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, 1977 (EoNW77) as a compromise. Both sources differ slightly. EoNW77 shows the maximum low-pressure ranges at somewhat lower altitudes whereas for high pressures >40 psi BLAST shows no optimum altitudes at all (see the innermost isobar). However, since numerical fitting of curves taken from a paper would be a Sisyphean task while BLAST already outputs plottable numbers, only isobars from the latter are plotted here.

• Additional note: First image moved from German Wikipedia to Commons. New version created on Feb. 4 2005 with higher quality (saved and edited as Postscript with Gnuplot, then converted to higher quality PNG via GIMP).