The properties used to explode an object cannot be animated. When something explodes, it happens at a single point in time. This means that all the settings in the Particle Generator menu are used at once, at the beginning of the explosion.
To explode a 3D object:
(a) Stream Type box (b) Interactive Type box (c) Render Type box
The following figure shows the schematic and the result of exploding a 3D object of an apple. The number of polygons is set to 200. The result shows frame 20.