SAFETY CRITERION FOR PRESSURE WAVE

A safety criterion for the pressure wave generated by artillery and other explosive weapons was worked out by a joined research scheme consisting of (1) making a detailed study of the physical properties of such waves and, through massive animal experiments, revealing the rules that govern their damaging effect; (2) finding out the principal parameters of the pressure wave that determine the condition and degree of damage and formulating a safety margin for the tested animals in terms of these parameters; (3) determining the pressurewave tolerance difference between the human body and that of the tested animal through a number of well controlled contrast experiments and then (4) drafting a preliminary safety criterion on the bases of (3) for the verification of its reliability and fitness in actual cases of exposure. More than 20 kinds of weapons were used as the source of pressure wave. Guinea pig served as the main experimental animal whose auditory characteristics are close and comparable to those of human beings except that its pressure-wave tolerance is about 8 dB lower than that of the latter.