Dataset of experimental fragmentation results and petrophysical properties for pyroclasts from Mt. Pelée, Martinique

Mt. Pelée is a stratovolcano in Martinique, which produces eruptions drastically varying in style from lava dome formation and collapse to long-lasting violent explosivity. This dataset provides results from petrophysical analysis and fragmentation experiments of pyroclastic samples from Mt. Pelée, together allowing new insights into the controls of fragmentation efficiency and eruption dynamics. Petrophysical properties are given for pyroclasts collected from ignimbrites from two dome-forming and three Plinian eruptions of Mt. Pelée. These samples were fragmented at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU Munich) in twenty-two rapid decompression experiments for the study of Huebsch et al. (2023), and seventeen for the study of Kueppers et al. (2015). Raw experimental grain size distribution (GSD) results from sieving products of these experiments are provided. The included Figure 1 shows a comparison of two common methods of quantifying fragmentation efficiency as a fractal dimension (Df) from GSDs, using cumulative weight fractions or numbers of particles as summary of particle proportions per grain size. Figure 2 shows the maximum particle ejection velocity vs the potential energy of fragmentation from each Huebsch et al. (2023) experiment. A full description of the data and methods is provided in the included data description file.