Visualization of Hemispherical Post-Detonation Fireball Internal Structures

Hemispherical charges are initiated above a transparent plate in a half-plane configuration, allowing optical access to the internal regions of the luminous fireball. High-speed visualization enables characterization of the internal luminous structure, showing clearly the bright shell and dark core regions. Spectroscopic and pyrometric diagnostics are applied to these flows, generating quantitative information on the spatial distribution of temperature inside the fireball. Both cased and uncased charges can be examined using this methodology, and several different high explosives are tested. This approach can be useful in validation of detailed explosive fireball models. Initial comparisons with such models are presented.