Blast Testing and Explosion Testing Data AcquisitionHigh-speed DAQ for measuring blast pressure, shock waves, impulse, and vibration in explosive testing.

What is blast testing, and why does it matter?

Blast testing, also called explosion testing, is the controlled measurement of the pressure, thermal, and mechanical effects produced by a detonation or other rapid release of energy. It covers a wide range of scales and setups: a few-gram explosive sample detonated in a lab shock tube, a full-scale production blast at an open-pit mine, a live-fire test on a defense range, or a blast-load test against a building facade or vehicle panel. In every case, the goal is the same: to turn a violent, fast-moving physical event into accurate, usable data.

Why that data matters differs by industry, but the stakes are consistently high:

• Mining. Blast design directly affects fragmentation quality, flyrock risk, and the extent to which ground vibration and air overpressure reach nearby structures or communities. Measuring actual blast performance – not just modeling it – is how mine operators optimize blast design, validate new explosive formulations, and demonstrate compliance with statutory air-blast and vibration limits.

• Civil engineering. Blast-resistant design for facades, blast walls, bridges, and other critical infrastructure must be validated against real-world loading conditions before a design is finalized, certified, or insured. Blast testing is the empirical check of whether a structure actually performs as its design calculations predict.

• Defense. Weapon and IED effects, vehicle armor performance, protective equipment, and blast overpressure exposure limits for personnel are all characterized through instrumented blast testing – data that feeds directly into force protection and safety decisions.

Across all of these, blast testing also plays a role that's easy to overlook: it's the real-world dataset that validates the numerical and simulation models that test programs increasingly rely on. A simulation is only as trustworthy as the physical test data it was calibrated against – which is why the accuracy of the underlying measurement system matters as much as the test itself.

Capture the full pressure-time history, from rise to negative phase

A blast or explosion produces a distinct pressure-time signature: a near-instantaneous jump to peak pressure as the shock front arrives, a decay back toward ambient, and typically a negative (below-ambient) phase before the pressure recovers.

Extracting meaningful data from that signature – for explosives R&D, structural design validation, or personnel exposure assessment – requires a measurement chain that doesn't distort or truncate any part of it.

Dewesoft systems are built around this requirement:

• Sample rates up to 15 MHz per channel on SIRIUS XHS data acquisition hardware resolve rise times well under a microsecond, so the true peak amplitude is captured rather than a rounded-off approximation.

• Wide, gap-free acquisition records the complete positive and negative phase of the wave, not just the initial spike, so impulse (the pressure integrated over time) can be calculated accurately.

• Built-in math channels in DewesoftX compute peak pressure, arrival time, positive phase duration, and impulse directly from the raw waveform, without exporting to a separate analysis package.

• Multi-point arrays – several pressure sensors positioned along a line or grid – let engineers track how the shock front propagates and confirm wave velocity and attenuation as a function of distance, a standard requirement in explosives characterization and blast-load research.

Whether the goal is validating a simulation model against real detonation data or confirming that a production blast stays within regulatory air-overpressure limits, the underlying requirement is the same: a measurement system that resolves the event as it actually happened.

Direct, low-noise compatibility with blast pressure sensors

Blast pressure is typically measured with one of two sensor technologies, and Dewesoft hardware is built to work with both without additional signal conditioning:

• ICP®/IEPE piezoelectric pressure sensors (quartz or tourmaline element, free-field pencil probes, or reflected-pressure gauges) require a constant-current excitation source. Dewesoft SIRIUS XHS modules supply up to 20 mA of built-in IEPE power, meeting the higher current draw specified by many high-frequency blast sensors without an external ICP amplifier in the signal path.

• Piezoresistive pressure sensors, often used for longer-duration or DC-coupled measurements where the piezoelectric sensor's charge leakage would be a limitation, connect through Dewesoft's voltage and bridge input modules.

Because signal integrity depends on more than the sensor itself, a few details matter in the full measurement chain – all of which Dewesoft's engineering and application support team can help specify for a given test plan:

• Low-capacitance coaxial cabling to preserve high-frequency response over cable runs from the sensor to the recording system, which can be tens to hundreds of meters in range or on a mine site.

• Resonant frequency and rise-time matching between the sensor and the expected pulse duration, so the sensing element itself doesn't become the limiting factor in the measurement.

• Thermal and light-flash protection for sensors mounted close to the detonation, where the fireball's radiant heat and flash can affect readings before the mechanical shock even arrives – a well-documented failure mode, particularly for piezoresistive elements.

This direct compatibility means a test engineer can bring in PCB, Kistler, or other IEPE/ICP and piezoresistive pressure transducers already qualified for a given standard or range and connect them directly to a Dewesoft system, rather than redesigning the signal chain around the DAQ.

One software platform, from sensor setup to final report

DewesoftX is included with every Dewesoft data acquisition system and covers the full workflow of a blast test, from initial sensor configuration through final reporting:

• Sensor and TEDS setup with built-in IEPE/ICP and bridge-sensor libraries, so pressure-sensor sensitivity and units are configured correctly before the first shot.

• Flexible triggering, including pre-trigger buffering, level and slope triggers, and external trigger inputs (from a break-wire, detonator command, or timing signal), so the system is armed and capturing before the event occurs.

• Real-time visualization of every channel during setup and test execution, so sensor health and signal levels can be confirmed before a live test – not discovered afterward in the data. Because the display updates in real time, engineers can also review incoming waveforms while a long-duration recording is still running, without waiting for it to finish.

• Time synchronization across a wide test site, including IRIG, GPS, and PTP (IEEE 1588) synchronization, keeps multiple DAQ units aligned to the same clock across a large blast site or test range – important when sensor arrays or camera stations are spread over hundreds of meters or split across independent recording units.

• Redundant, fail-safe local recording. Because a blast test typically can't be repeated, data is written to onboard, non-volatile storage as it's acquired rather than held only in memory, so a system fault after the shot doesn't put the one dataset the test produced at risk.

• Built-in math, including peak detection, impulse (integral) calculation, FFT and order analysis, filtering, and cross-channel comparison, so post-test analysis happens in the same software the data was recorded in.

• Automated reporting to export processed results, plots, and video into a structured report format for internal review, client delivery, or regulatory submission.

Because DewesoftX runs the same way across every Dewesoft hardware configuration – from a compact field unit to a full multi-chassis system – engineers who learn the software on one test program can apply the same workflow on the next, regardless of how the instrumentation scope changes.

Purpose-built for mining, civil engineering, and defense blast programs

Blast and explosion testing covers a wide range of applications, each with different measurement requirements:

• Mining: Blast design validation, explosives development, and compliance monitoring require accurate air overpressure and ground vibration measurements. Dewesoft supports multi-point sensor arrays for production blasting and explosives R&D, from detonation pressure measurements to monitoring vibration and air-blast limits at nearby structures.

• Civil engineering: Blast-resistant structures such as facades, blast walls, bridges, and critical infrastructure require simultaneous measurement of pressure, impulse, strain, displacement, and acceleration. Dewesoft combines these signals in one synchronized DAQ system for direct analysis of blast loads and structural response.

• Defense: From shock tubes and explosive ordnance characterization to vehicle and personnel protection testing, defense applications demand high sampling rates, many synchronized channels, high-speed video, and rugged field hardware. Dewesoft systems scale from laboratory experiments to full-scale field tests and support remote operation for safer testing.

Across these applications, the challenge is the same: accurately capture fast, high-amplitude blast events and their effects across every measurement channel.