International Ammunition Technical Guidelines

Kingery-Bulmash Blast Parameter Calculator

The Kingery-Bulmash Blast Parameter Calculator calculates the blast-wave parameters of a hemispherical free field air-blast, based on the empirical relations developed by Kingery and Bulmash. It provides data for incident pressure, reflected pressure, incident impulse, reflected impulse, duration of positive pressure phase, time of arrival of the shock wave and shock front velocity.

Equations to estimate blast over-pressure other parameters characterizing a blast-wave at a certain range for engineering purposes at range have been developed by Charles Kingery and Gerald Bulmash. These equations are widely accepted as authoritative engineering predictions for determining free-field pressures and loads on structures. The equations in this calculator are based on data from explosive tests using charge weights from less than 1kg to over 400,000kg.

This calculator is based on the Kingery-Bulmash equations used to model a hemispheric, surface explosion, and should not be used for applications requiring the calculation of values for a spherical burst in the air.

The Kingery-Bulmash equations have been developed for TNT-explosion events. A well accepted concept is that of TNT-equivalency, to reflect the differences in explosive strength of different explosive formulations. The amount of an explosive is transferred to the equivalent amount of TNT by multiplication with a certain factor, derived theoretically or from experimental values. The implemented values in this tool are taken from AASTP-1.

 
 
 
TNT Weight for Pressure (kg): TNT Weight for Impulse (kg):
Incident Pressure (kPa): Incident Impulse (kPa-ms):
Reflected Pressure (kPa): Reflected Impulse (kPa-ms):
Time of Arrival (ms): Positive Phase Duration (ms):
Shock Front Velocity (m/s):

About: Kingery-Bulmash Blast Parameter Calculator

Airblast parameters calculated from range, NEQ and TNT equivalence using the polynomials described in "Airblast parameters from TNT spherical air burst and hemispherical surface burst" by Charles N. Kingery and Gerald Bulmash, Technical report ARBL-TR-02555, dated April 1984.

IATG 01.80 - Formulae for Ammunition Management - Clause 6.2