scope:

This WRC Bulletin, the second of the two Bulletin series, covers the fracture-safe and fatigue design criteria for the safe design of detonation-induced pressure loading in containment vessels. The first of the two Bulletin series was published in December 2002 as WRC Bulletin 477. These two Bulletins are intended for use by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Boiler & Pressure Vessel Code Committee for their consideration in developing code rules for the safe design of containment vessel subjected to high-energy, detonation-induced, pressure loading.

This bulletin provides the technical basis and justification for a fracture-safe and fatigue crack-growth adequacy design of HSLA-100 steel containment vessels. Although this report specifically addresses the LANL containment vessel design, the methodology and criteria applied herein may be extended to other vessel geometries (i.e., cylinders, ellipsoidal or torispherical shells, cones, etc) and more complex vessel systems (i.e., cylinder-to-cylinder intersections, etc). Lastly, because the explosion products and debris from these experiments produce hazardous materials, the criteria described in this paper are for a single-use application of a high-explosive (HE) detonation-induced loading event. The reconstitution of these vessels for further use, i.e., multiple HE events, becomes prohibitive from a financial standpoint. As such, the containment design must incorporate full advantage of the material's ductility and fracture toughness.

The technical approach utilized herein is that of Fracture Safe Design, which was developed by the Naval Research Laboratory in the 1970s and is based upon the Dynamic Tear Test Energy (DTTE), an ASTM-approved procedure (ASTM E 604). This work was published as WRC Bulletin 186. However, the Fracture Safe Design approach is further supplemented by other data (i.e., Charpy, J-R) and advanced fracture mechanics procedures presented in the Appendices