In reply to Eric Walker's message of Tue, 26 Feb 2013 21:11:33 -0800: Hi Eric,
I think you may have hit the nail on the head. If an explosion occurs inside the lattice, heat from it will spread out spherically in all directions, melting the metal as it goes. Where this sphere intersects the surface of the metal, a hole will form, releasing the pressure of the explosion, and the plasma, vaporized and molten metal, will all go in that direction, expanding as it goes, and producing a more or less conical crater, unless it is already very close to the surface, in which case it may just blow part of the surface away leaving a gap. [snip] >I'm not sure how explosives shielded by tamper work, but the crater >pictures look a little like that to me. It looks like there is a small >volume that turns to liquid and then possibly gas at a rate faster than the >surrounding material, creating an expanding volume. The craters we see >point outward from the surface of the substrate, and I would expect the >surface side of the molten volume to exert less pressure on the volume than >the opposing side. This in turn leads an eruption away from the inner wall >and towards the surface. In this model, the momenta of the original >sources of heat do not play a part. > >Eric Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/project.html
