Measurement of ground shock in explosive centrifuge model tests

Los Alamos National Laboratory has begun a project to simulate the formation and collapse of underground cavities produced by nuclear explosions using chemical explosions at much smaller scale on a large geotechnical centrifuge. Use of a centrifuge for this project presents instrumentation challenges which are not encountered in tests at similar scale off of the centrifuge. Electromagnetic velocity measuring methods which have been very successfully applied to such models at 1 g would be very difficult, if not impossible, to implement at 100 g. We are investigating the feasibility of other techniques for monitoring the ground shock in small-scale tests including accelerometers, stress gauges, dynamic strain meters and small, mutual-inductance particle velocity gauges. Initial results indicate that some of these techniques can be adapted for centrifuge applications. 17 references, 4 figures