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Abstract
Taylor’s blast wave theory was the first of its kind and focused on the dynamics and thermodynamics of spherical blast waves. Taylor’s model was stated as a similarity solution and determined the time-dependent blast radius, as well as the radially- and temporarily-varying pressure, density and velocity fields behind the blast wave. Due to the stiffness of the associated governing, coupled differential equations, a special geometric projection method must be used to integrate the equations. The theoretical solution is compared against a rare and recently reported numerical solution for near-ground, hemispherical blast wave propagation. While the theoretical solution for the time varying blast wave pressure jump is qualitatively quite similar to the reported numerical solution, significant quantitative differences are found. These differences are attributed to: i) poorly defined model conditions and definitions in the numerical solution, and ii) differences in the blast waves modeled, spherical versus hemispherical. It is argued that the present theoretical solution is valid since: 1) simple order of magnitude arguments indicate that predicted blast wave pressure ratios are of the correct magnitude, and 2) a numerical validation test using a simpler spherical blast wave model predicts results that are essentially identical to those obtained by the full Taylor model.