A method to estimate the yield of an underground nuclear explosion

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Abstract
We have modeled the motion of a spherically diverging shock front, due to a point source explosion, using the Rankine–Hugoniot equations and an assumption about the partitioning of energy in the shocked sphere. Our analysis shows that the yield can be determined from measurements of the time dependence of the position and the particle velocity at the shock front, and the initial bulk density of the geologic medium. We compare and contrast our analysis with another theoretical model and experimental data, and show that our model has the potential to determine the yield accurately over an extended range of time, distance, and geologic media.

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