blast wave


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blast wave

A sharply defined wave of increased pressure rapidly propagated through a surrounding medium from a center of detonation or similar disturbance.
Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms. US Department of Defense 2005.
ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:
Noun1.blast wave - a region of high pressure travelling through a gas at a high velocity; "the explosion created a shock wave"
undulation, wave - (physics) a movement up and down or back and forth
sonic boom - an explosive sound caused by the shock wave of an airplane traveling faster than the speed of sound; "a sonic boom follows an aircraft as a wake follows a ship"
Based on WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection. © 2003-2012 Princeton University, Farlex Inc.
References in periodicals archive ?
"These changes provide evidence that the explosion's blast wave has moved beyond the ring into a region with less dense gas.
But the explosion was so big that the blast wave also demolished a house 100 yards away.
"First comes a blast wave of high pressure that spreads out at supersonic speeds and can cause devastating internal injuries.
Theory had predicted that the source would expand by about 1 milliarcsecond per day as the blast wave blew outward.
Data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory suggest the latter because they indicate that the blast wave from the supernova had slammed into material left behind by such a wind.
The blast wave was powerful enough to shatter some windows in nearby buildings.
The video further showed the driver detonating the bomb, which set off a tremendous fireball, followed by a blast wave that rippled across the base.
These spots light up as the supernova's blast wave smashes into material that was probably created by colliding winds from the progenitor star tens of thousands of years before it exploded (S&T: July 2004, page 15).
This expanding blast wave produces a steady stream of X rays.
If they do contain an actual audio recording of the test blast itself (something I'm often suspicious of-I suspect many were filmed silently and have a stock blast sound effect), it's almost always shifted in time so that the explosion and the sound of the blast wave are simultaneous," the New York Daily News quoted him as saying.
The knots are regions where the blast wave, rushing out at 64 million kilometers per second from the supernova, has smacked into the ring, heating it to millions of kelvins.