Can you spread out air dropped bomb in a pattern to increase yield?

[Arugela]

Or can you only direct more energy downwards? Does any patterning actually increase the overall yield or are you stuck with just your initial amount and how much you can get in a certain direction?

I'm trying to design a hypothetical oversized military vehicle that would shoot moab bombs as artillery/mortar shells. Or if a giant space bomber could drop conventional in the amount to get a WWII level conventional nuke yield.

If you are stuck with starting yield can you get more than half of it downwards? Maybe with something like a pyramid shape?

Edited 19 hours ago by Arugela

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

14 minutes ago, Arugela said:

.

If you are stuck with starting yield can you get more than half of it downwards? Maybe with something like a pyramid 

See: shaped charge 

[Nuke]

well a bomb creates shockwaves, and you can probably through timing and precision, get a lot of shock waves to stack focusing the energy into specific areas. this is actually how pits of nuclear material are crushed to initiate fission, and then maybe fusion. i think its also used to put out oil well fires.

[Codraroll]

At some point, you'll be better off using sub-munitions. Cluster bombs. If you want a lot of force in a small area, use a shaped charge. If you want to spread the force over a large area, multiple dispersed explosions yields better results than one big one, due to the square-cube-law.

[PakledHostage]

It's possibly still too political for this forum, even over 75 years later, but the bombing of Dresden during WWII is claimed to have intentionally been designed to create a firestorm that would burn off all the oxygen and asphyxiate as many people as possible. The facts support that a large percentage of the approximately 25 000 civilian deaths were due to asphyxiation, so it seems to have worked.

[Nuke]

5 minutes ago, PakledHostage said:

It's possibly still too political for this forum, even over 75 years later, but the bombing of Dresden during WWII is claimed to have intentionally been designed to create a firestorm that would burn off all the oxygen and asphyxiate as many people as possible. The facts support that a large percentage of the approximately 25 000 civilian deaths were due to asphyxiation, so it seems to have worked.

thats just what happens when you carpet bomb with napalm. ww2 bombers really lacked the accuracy to set up a precision-formed shockfront. it was all about getting close enough and saturate.

Edited 6 hours ago by Nuke

[kerbiloid]

When an explosive bomb explodes in air, it causes a spherical shockwave.
When the shockwave reaches the ground surface, it reflects back as a spherical reflected shockwave.
These two spherical shockwaves move towards each other, merge, and form a resulting shockwave which is what affects the objects.
If the explosion (doesn't matter if chemical or nuke) happened at some optimal altitude, defined by the yield, the resulting shockwave is cylindrical, so its pressure decreases proportionally to the square of distance, rather than cube for a spherical one.
So, ignition at the optimal height increases the total hit area for the price of lower pressure at GZ.

When it explodes at some another optimal low altitude, the original shockwave needs some time to accelerate to hit the ground at high speed.
Then the area is smaller, but the hit at the GZ is higher.

Say, the Davy Crockett shell had two options of aerial blast.
The first one was initiated by the radioaltimeter, it was to increase area.
The another one was initiated by the capacity sensor at a half-meter from ground, to increase the GZ hit.

To prevent stealing on misfire, the ammo is equipped with a contact sensor, which initiates immediately on hit.

To cause destruction of reinforced structures close to GZ, the ammo (not Davy Crockett) should explode underground, so its contact sensor is equipped by a delay pyrotechnical thing, which allows it first reach some depth, then initiates.

As all of this is combined in the same ammo, the all-purpose explosive ammo can't be shaped, as needs to cause the shockwave either down, or up/around.

***

The fuel-air charge make sense only with aerial blast, so it's initiated at the optimal altitude.

The shrapnel charge has a strong case behind and a shrapnel forward.
When it blasts in mid-air, the gas expansion is stopped behind, and focused forward, accelerating the shrapnel elements.

The cumulative ammo has a vortex, which is radially compressed, and then a hydraulic shock turns it into a melted metal beam.

***

A nuke loses much energy by sending the upper part of shockwave up, and it can't be prevented simply by a strong case, because the case itself is a part of compressed gas cloud, immediately caused by primary X-ray.

To focus its energy forward, they developed a special nuke with a nozzle-like thing, filled with a filler, and sealed with a tungsten membrane.
It should focus the energy in forward direction, saving energy.

That's how the Casaba howitzer began, and then it was turned into propulsion charges of the Orion drive, which appeared as a by-product of this study.

And now about the Orion drive...

Edited 2 hours ago by kerbiloid