Explosive placement in a Junk Car Demolition

[NameWithheld]

I'm currently planning a blast this coming fall/winter with a junk car- most likely a generic notchback sedan. As I like to plan my blasts months in advance I figured I might as well starting thinking about it early... and one of the first problems I came to was how to maximize the damage to the vehicle via explosives placement.

The location will most likely be a rural gravel pit.

Explosives used will probably include some, all, or none of the following:

Ammonium Nitrate / 300 mesh Aluminum Powder, 70:30. 25-40+kg

ETN plastic, >2kg.

R-salt, RDX, Sorbitol Hexanitrate, Nitromethane, PETN, all tentative.

As my blasts are few and far between I have a tendency to throw everything together :rolleyes:

Where should I place the explosives and how should they be arranged so as to leave as little of the vehicle remaining as possible? The goal here is not to simply blow the car into two pieces- but rather to vaporize it entirely. I would be happiest if there's simply an empty smoking crater at the end :D

I have some ideas of my own, but I'd love to see if any forum goers have experience with this, and I welcome any advise.

*if this topic has been covered feel free to delete >_>*

[Hinckleyforpresident]

I would imagine that one could get good results by placing a large charge under the engine block, and a slightly smaller charge about 2/3 of the way down the car. These two charges would be connected by detcord.

I think that no matter what portions of the frame, the engine, the drive shaft, and the transmission will survive, even if they fly 40 feet and get all contorted. As such, some serious shelter would be recommended for such a detonation.

Although I could be totally wrong, I've never had any experience with anything that extreme.

[-=HeX=-]

Fill the cars tank with gasoline. It should add a nice flame. Place ETN plastic ex around the tank. Put as much ANFO as one can inside the car. If you place a shitload of ANFO in the car I honestly do not see it surviving the blast! Use ANNMAl Under the car, and set off the charges simultaenously with detcord.

By the way, could you email of the video of the huge blasts you did? I would like to put then in the forum video I am compiling. All credit will be given where due. My email is lordi--101@hotmail.com No pressure on sending them.

As for the 'car bomb', have fun!

[iHME]

I'd think that placing a charge inside the engine would cause some damage, and think about how confined it would be! I'd also try to blow the chassis multiple pieces along with driveshafts.

[Hinckleyforpresident]

I'd think that placing a charge inside the engine would cause some damage, and think about how confined it would be! I'd also try to blow the chassis multiple pieces along with driveshafts.

I would imagine that it would prove rather difficult to pack 30+ kilos of any explosive into an engine.... Never mind get it into an efficient shape.

[Hirudinea]

I saw on a show on special effects that they made a car flip by placing a small piece of telephone pole placed in a mortor welded to the lower frame of the rear of the car. A charge was used to fire the pole out of the mortor and flip the car, you might consider that to add a little spice to your show.

[NameWithheld]

I'd think that placing a charge inside the engine would cause some damage, and think about how confined it would be! I'd also try to blow the chassis multiple pieces along with driveshafts.

I would imagine that it would prove rather difficult to pack 30+ kilos of any explosive into an engine.... Never mind get it into an efficient shape.

Hmm.. this got me to thinking, it would be fun to seal off the entire engine block with expanding foam or something else easy and just pour slurry into the whole thing.

I saw on a show on special effects that they made a car flip by placing a small piece of telephone pole placed in a mortor welded to the lower frame of the rear of the car. A charge was used to fire the pole out of the mortor and flip the car, you might consider that to add a little spice to your show.

Yeah, I'll probably mess with the car a bit before the grand finale, most likely experimenting with shaped charges.

Put as much ANFO as one can inside the car. If you place a shitload of ANFO in the car I honestly do not see it surviving the blast! Use ANNMAl Under the car, and set off the charges simultaenously with detcord.


Err... you seem to be assuming I have an infinite supply of blasting supplies. :eek: As much as one could fit inside a car? Filling it, you mean. Sorry, that would be over a ton of explosive. And telling me to put it inside the car isn't very helpful- perhaps if you have a specific location and setup for the charges in the car's interior.

ANNMAl would be fine, if I happen to have enough NM. I did, however, already list my likely available explosives, among which NM is merely tentative, and, if used, would likely be in small quantity.

Yes- simply using hundreds or perhaps thousands of pounds of explosive would accomplish my goals, but that's not an option in this case. Rather we're looking at efficient use of limited resources :)

[-=HeX=-]

Sorry, I just take ammonium nitrate for granted, having such easy access to it. Over here you can just drive out to the sticks and in to a farmer shop and they sell you anything. No questions asked. Ammonium nitrate is very important over here as a fertilizer. However it may be treated in the polymer shit, but that will just wash right off. A 50 kilo sack of ammonium nitrate is quite big...

Have fun with a few shared charges first, I will have a look at a few cars and come up with ideas.

Please take videos! I want to see this...

[fiknet]

How about sitting on the roof of the car? While it may not do the best damage as a whole bunch of charges place in and around the car I think it would look quite cool to see a small bucket on top of a car in the distance only seconds later to have it crushed into the ground by a massive explosion.

[joffe]

What's the purpose of this experiment? Are you looking for actual test results, or are you just planning to blast the car into as many small pieces as possible? If you actually manage to get hold of 25-40 kg of AN in addition to the rest of the goodies you describe. That car will be pretty much torn to pieces and the area around the explosion will be saturated with shrapnel up to several hundred meters, no matter where you place the charge(s) underneath the car. The largest pieces of shrapnel will most likely come from the engine which is pretty hard to demolish unless you use TNT or PE. If shrapnel is an issue, I would be careful with filling the engine with explosives.

Placing the charge on top of the car is a waste of explosives. The result wil be thoroughly disappointing as (as you all know) most of the energy will travel upwards. I've studied a couple of vehicles being destroyed by explosives detonated on top of them and I was amazed at how little damage was done to them, considering the amount of explosives that was involved.

Placing charges around the car will be even more disappointing. Charges detonated on one side of the car will throw the car around a bit (if it is large enough). Charges detonated around the car will probably leave the chassis and the engine. (unless, of course, the charges are pretty big).

[Emil]

This is definitley one type of blast that does really get my blood flowing. I have never done it, but would love to at some point in the future.

I would imagine the best thing to do would be to place 3 or 4 charges throughout the car and connect them in series with detcord for the best effect, (like someone stated above). I would probably say one in the boot (trunk), 2 in the main interior (one back seat and one front area), and one at the front of the car, probably under the bonnet. (hood)

It all depends on what kind of damage you are looking for. 25kgs of anything should completely vapourize most of it, apart from the heavy duty parts like the engineblock and gearbox etc. I've seen a few clips before of cars being destroyed with explosives. In most of them there was never more than 5 pounds of explosive involved, and the results were incredible.

Here check this video out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpYu4HLiXFc&feature=related

As you can see even this pretty much takes the car to a relatively small pile of parts.

If I was personally planning to do this type of explosion, I would probably like to experiment with a couple of scrap cars just to see the effects of the ammount and placement of explosive. I'm not implementing that anyone would do this is any way, but if you were actually planning on blowing a car up in "real time", it would have one simple objective, and that would be to remove the person travelling in it. In this scenario, one would not have access to inside of the car. He would have to construct his device underneath the car.

I would like to play around with this scenario, merley from a curious point of view, (Not because I plan to blow someone up). Would it be best to place the explosive in the centre of the car, under the drivers footwell area, or maybe multiple. Possibly even a large shaped charge etc??

To anyone who is able to blast around freely and safely like this, I would love to see some experimenting with cars. Changing the characteristics around would be more pleasing, beings as all you ever seem to see is "Blowing a car up" and the results being a pulvarised mass of metal. It's enjoyable but leaves it hard to understand more about specifics of the blast.

[billybobobrain]

If I were going to blow a car into oblivion, I would put some gas in the tank place a couple of pounds of explosives on the gas tank about 1/3 of the way in from the back of the car. As close to the middle as possible. Then I would place another charge about the same size between the engine and the cab, as low as you could on the fire wall. And maybe one more somewhere in the middle inside the passenger compartment.
If I were to try this. I would also try to find some information on where the VIN. numbers on the car where so I could remove them.

[Cobalt.45]

MythBusters just aired a good explosion of a kid's parent's car. It was aired 8-15-08, Episode 84: Viewers Choice Special, I think it was a rerun.

I can't seem to find anything except the "Hollywood" version where they used a couple gallons of gasoline:
http://www.videosift.com/video/Mythbusters-Exploding-Car-Caught-on-High-Speed-Camera

The REAL demolition of the car was done w/what looked to be ANFO, in a quite large quantity- maybe >200 lbs. It was packed under the hood and inside the car. The largest pieces shown was a rim and a portion of the MacPherson strut.

The engine wasn't shown, if in fact there was anything to be shown (I also think it should have survived somewhat intact).

If anyone can find the video of it, it should make for good viewing as well show the placement of the HE.

[fluoroantimonic]

My recommendation is to save your high velocity explosives for the engine and leave the ANAl for the body. I would guess that packing enough ETN around the engine would leave you with pretty small pieces. It would be very interesting to fill the crank case with a liquid explosive like NM, NG, or EGDN in addition to the ETN around it. Maybe fill the transmission case with it too! :P

The rest of the car should be pretty well taken care of by a (or maybe two or three) hundred pounds of ANAl placed under it. If you want the leftovers to be small as possible it might not be a bad idea to go with something more brisant than ANAl though. ANNM is obviously the first choice, but I'm sure there are some other alternatives. Maybe AN/EGDN? On the other hand the Al would definately be good for making a more impressive detonation with that nice long shock wave.

Filling the gas tank with plain old gasoline seems kindof boring in my opinion. There must be something a little more interesting to fill it with...

I looked into NM synthesis just for kicks. US Patent 4,424,385 has lots of good info. It actually looks not too hard, simply make methyl chloride from methanol and HCl and react that with sodium nitrite. The catch is that the reaction requires a pressure vessel since methyl chloride boils and -25*C.I believe regular schedule 40 steel pipe would be strong enough to handle the pressure at the needed reaction temperature (65-75*C). All materials are cheap and OTC. It might be a bit more work, but its worth considering. I would bet it is substantially easier and cheaper than synthesizing an equivalent amount of NG or EGDN. Not to mention much safer.

[-=HeX=-]

Ah car demolition... Why not fill every available orifice or tank with EGDN or PLX or an other liquid explosive. Then surround the engine with ETN, place ETN/NG into every crack in the engine, fill tires with EGDN, and use ANFO for the boot, interior, underneath the car (seeing as you now have LOADS of AN on hand) and everywhere you can pack some in. place a few sacks UNDER the car so we can see if your new fuel can really make cars fly. I reckon we can stuff 100kg or more into a small saloon car and 200kg into a people carrier. The huge amount of explosives will simply cause the car to 'vanish'. Have fun and get it on tape, because I LOVED the last large blast.