3 ms·

Since explosions work on cubic law probably not much worse. And ammonia has pretty low detonation speed. It would have been worse, but probably 10-20% more des

Since explosions work on cubic law probably not much worse. And ammonia has pretty low detonation speed. It would have been worse, but probably 10-20% more destruction.

jhgb 5y ago
What if this were the difference between the silo shielding a part of the town, and the silo being completely obliterated? Also, the cube root of 5 is not 1.2-1.3 anyway, but quite a bit more, so there's that.
baybal2 5y ago
If ammonia was wet, it could've reduced the detonation power many times. Since it was a port, and a non air conditioned warehouse, it's not that much of a stretch to say that this must have played a role too.
PicassoCTs 5y ago
Eh, it depends? Explosive that is blown up, as in ejected upwards before igniting can become a 2nd explosion, shaping the first one below into something more dangerous.
nullc 5y ago
You mean that the pressure from an explosion follows the inverse cube of the distance, so even increasing the explosive power a lot wouldn't matter that much because the distance to damaging-pressure (for whatever threshold you choose) would only increase with the cube root of the factor it was increased by? How do you get 10% more? Based on that logic I'd expect the damage radius to be 1.6x the size for a 5x larger explosion, which would mean 2.5x the area inside a damage-threshold pressure contour.
- ReptileMan 5y ago
  Mostly because ammonia is shitty explosive. So it just wouldn't explode that efficiently if we make the pile bigger. The fact that it is 5 times bigger doesn't mean that it would release 5 times the energy in a detonation.
lmilcin 5y ago
Except even small increase in range means way larger part of the city would be covered by the blast. Additionally, many buildings were on the verge of collapse. I can imagine they did not need much more blast power to actually topple.

3 ms·

Since explosions work on cubic law probably not much worse. And ammonia has pretty low detonation speed. It would have been worse, but probably 10-20% more des

by ReptileMan 5y ago

Since explosions work on cubic law probably not much worse. And ammonia has pretty low detonation speed. It would have been worse, but probably 10-20% more destruction.

jhgb 5y ago
What if this were the difference between the silo shielding a part of the town, and the silo being completely obliterated? Also, the cube root of 5 is not 1.2-1.3 anyway, but quite a bit more, so there's that.
baybal2 5y ago
If ammonia was wet, it could've reduced the detonation power many times. Since it was a port, and a non air conditioned warehouse, it's not that much of a stretch to say that this must have played a role too.
PicassoCTs 5y ago
Eh, it depends? Explosive that is blown up, as in ejected upwards before igniting can become a 2nd explosion, shaping the first one below into something more dangerous.
nullc 5y ago
You mean that the pressure from an explosion follows the inverse cube of the distance, so even increasing the explosive power a lot wouldn't matter that much because the distance to damaging-pressure (for whatever threshold you choose) would only increase with the cube root of the factor it was increased by? How do you get 10% more? Based on that logic I'd expect the damage radius to be 1.6x the size for a 5x larger explosion, which would mean 2.5x the area inside a damage-threshold pressure contour.
- ReptileMan 5y ago
  Mostly because ammonia is shitty explosive. So it just wouldn't explode that efficiently if we make the pile bigger. The fact that it is 5 times bigger doesn't mean that it would release 5 times the energy in a detonation.
lmilcin 5y ago
Except even small increase in range means way larger part of the city would be covered by the blast. Additionally, many buildings were on the verge of collapse. I can imagine they did not need much more blast power to actually topple.