Impact of dust in the decay of blast waves produced by a nuclear explosion.

In this paper, we have studied the impact created by the introduction of up to 5% dust particles in enhancing the decay of blast waves produced by a nuclear explosion. A mathematical model is designed and modified using appropriate assumptions, the most important being treating a nuclear explosion as a point source of energy. A system of partial differential equations describing the one-dimensional, adiabatic, unsteady flow of a relaxing gas with dust particles and radiation effects is considered. The symmetric nature of an explosion is captured using the Lie group invariance and self-similar solutions obtained for the gas undergoing strong shocks. The enhancements in decay caused by varying the quantity of dust are studied. The energy released and the damage radius are found to decrease with time with an increase in the dust parameters.