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Old 11-05-2015, 01:16 PM   #48
Icelander
 
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Default Re: Dust Explosion - Grain, flour, wheat

Quote:
Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
Now, with the way thermobaric explosives work in GURPS, we don't really need to figure out the dimensions of the detonated flour cloud - rather, we just need to know how much flour it contains at the optimal mix, and where the epicenter is.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
Using energy values for TNT equivalence assumes perfect shockwave formation and all fuel being consumed in the initial blast, both of which are unlikely to be the case (most dust explosions are actually deflagration, not detonation, and continue burning for some time after the initial blast). For example, a tanker truck explosion involves around twenty tons of flammable material with a heat of combustion about ten times the detonation energy of TNT, but it isn't equivalent to a tactical nuclear weapon.
The reason I think the dimensions of the dust cloud will be important is because of the physics that Anthony points out. We don't have an ideal air-to-dust mix that leads to a confined explosion, we're trying to set a still-swirling cloud of clumpy flour or grain dust afire. The TNT equivalency and using the GURPS rules to figure out the effects of a FAE explosion of that size just gives us a benchmark for what theoretically perfect efficiency of that much grain dust as a dust explosion would look like. It's not going to be anywhere close to what, in fact, happens.

Assuming that we get any detonation at all, more likely than a cataclysmic explosion is a series of irregularly shaped smaller explosions in those pockets where the mix happened to be good enough and, in between, a lot of rapidly burning dust that doesn't quite merit the term 'explosive'.

Lack of a big BOOM does not mean harmless, however. I'm not holding out hope for any 6dx100+ damage here, but I'm hoping that for anyone actually inside the cloud of grain dust or flour, there will be decent burning damage over the next couple of seconds.
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