A Peak-Stress Gauge for Determining the Yield of Underground Nuclear Detonations

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Abstract
A spherically shaped, stress‐sensitive plastic gauge designed by Power and Lombard in 1966 is described in terms of a phenomenological model. The predictions presented are based upon a semiempirical description given by Allison and Hauver in their work on uniaxially loaded flat Plexiglas disks. The model description is shown to be consistent with both the data of Power and Lombard and data reported in this paper. The anomalous gauge behavior reported by Power and Lombard is attributed to effects of the external circuit. This observation has led to a new circuit design which allows a sensitive measure of stress from 50 to 230 kbar. These results suggest that this gauge would be useful for obtaining hydrodynamic energy yield when used in conjunction with computer‐code calculations of shock‐wave effects associated with underground nuclear detonations.

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