Estimates Of Blast Injury And Acoustic Trauma Zones For Marine Mammals From Underwater Explosions PDF Download

Blast traumas are essentially mechanical responses, therefore blast effects are inducible and measurable in post-mortem specimens. To determine onset of damage zones for blast trauma in marine mammals, fresh post-mortem specimens were implanted with pressure gages, CT scanned, and exposed to underwater blast pressures of 10-300 psi. Following exposures, specimens were rescanned and necropsied by a team of blast pathology specialists blinded to test pressures. All procedures were documented by UW video and still photography. The results show severity and type of impacts are mass-dependent and correlated with received psi. Classic blast damage was found in all tissues. Some organs unique to cetaceans have distinct damage patterns that may be diagnostic in UW blast cases. For the smallest species, safe margins are in the 10-12 psi received pressure range; for larger species the ranges can be 20-25 psi. Important issues remaining to be tested include near field vs. far field loading effects, exponential vs sinusoidal bursts, and synergistic effects of rate of pressure increase, peak pressure, waveform and duration.