WordNet
n. a region of high pressure travelling through a gas at a high velocity; "the explosion created a shock wave" [syn: shock wave]
Wikipedia
A blast wave in fluid dynamics is the pressure and flow resulting from the deposition of a large amount of energy in a small very localised volume. The flow field can be approximated as a lead shock wave, followed by a 'self-similar' subsonic flow field. In simpler terms, a blast wave is an area of pressure expanding supersonically outward from an explosive core. It has a leading shock front of compressed gases. The blast wave is followed by a blast wind of negative pressure, which sucks items back in towards the center. The blast wave is harmful especially when one is very close to the center or at a location of constructive interference. High explosives, which detonate, generate blast waves.
Usage examples of "blast wave".
He landed under a large table with a laser drill press on it, just as the blast wave struck.
The oversized pack was no help at all, as the blast wave caught it where it protruded from cover, spun him away from shelter, and hammered him down on the wall's stonework.
The blast wave hadn't passed before Tucker was moving, ripping the headset from his ears and tossing it down.
Within seconds, the blast wave, travelling at the speed of sound and accompanied by winds of up to two hundred miles an hour, followed.
Following well behind the first two, it approached the carrier just as the blast wave erupted from the Soviet carrier's shattered fantail.
By the time the blast wave reached the Bolos, though, the flame had dissipated.
Debris followed by a terrific blast wave swept into the hall, tossing body parts across the table and into the people sitting on the opposite side.
Uhura, in the midst of a silent but determined search for victims of the blast wave, found herself forcibly swept up and hauled back to the medical center along with No Escape’.
As the building collapsed, the runabout raced into the expanding blast wave.
Just because he had managed to weather the blast wave's hammering without taking significant harm was no guarantee his comrade had been so fortunate.
The flier had given them a fraction-second of shelter, and by launching themselves into motion, traveling with the blast wave instead of meeting it with their bodies in the full grip of inertia, they had won a measure of freedom of action.
The huge glass windows faced the stadium and even at this distance the blast wave .
He groaned as the blast wave picked up the bodies of every human being on the flight deck and tossed them through the air like leaves before a gust front.
Their missiles raced outward, like the blast wave of some stupendous explosion, and its crest was a solid, curving wall of kamikazes vanishing into the plasma-cloud death of their own massive loads of antimatter.