Explosive yield determination using infrasonic signal power estimates and propagation corrections from numerical modelling

Infrasonic signal power estimated from stratospheric returns can be related to near-field acoustic power generated by an explosion. This requires propagation losses to be corrected for; one method for estimating such losses is to undertake numerical acoustic propagation modelling using state-of-the-art atmospheric specifications. Earlier work, focused on a small set of signals from well characterised explosive trials, identified that an incoherent modal sum was a promising method for calculating the source-to-receiver transmission loss. We extend the initial studies by applying this method to a wider set of explosively generated signals and include both tropospheric and stratospheric returns in the analysis. The larger dataset allows a preliminary assessment to be made of the uncertainties associated with yield determination using infrasonic power estimates.