Do Explosions Accelerate Constituents?

Do explosions typically exhibit increasing acceleration of the exploding material at some stage of the explosion?
- Ray
Warrenton Virginia

You bet! That's the whole idea.  An explosion, be it chemical, nuclear, or whatever,  deposits a lot of energy into a small volume.  This will raise the local pressure which in turn exerts forces on objects surrounding it.  And, as you know, a la Newton:  acceleration = force / mass.

LeeH

(published on 07/06/2010)

This question is a follow up for "Do explosions accelerate constituents?". My question had to do with inceasing acceleration (jerk), not acceleration itself.
- Ray
Warrenton Virginia

Well, sure. There has to be some positive value of d³x/dt³ since the acceleration is zero moments before the explosion and finite moments afterward.  There must be some non-zero value of the 'jerk'.   Describing explosions in detail is a very difficult problem, I'm not sure how to calculate it myself.  You need a very complicated gas-dynamics computer program to do it correctly.

LeeH

(published on 07/12/2010)