Experimental Investigation on Mutilayered Explosion Containment Vessels

Explosion containment vessels (ECVs) are used to fully contain the effects of high explosions. As monobloc thick-walled ECVs, which are widely used now, become larger and thicker, they are difficult in fabrication, high in cost, and uncertain in quality of very thick steel plates. A multilayered ECV (MECV) is presented to develop large-sized ECVs in this paper, which is convenient and economical in fabrication. Under static loadings the design criteria for the multilayered vessels has been established. However, it can not be used to design MECVs because blast loadings are quite different from static loadings. Five MECVs with the same materials and dimensions except for steel ribbon winding angles were fabricated and tested under internal blast loading induced by centrally located TNT in order to develop design criteria. Dynamic strains at the outer surface of tested vessels were measured, and fracture characteristics also were observed, which lay a solid foundation for conducting theoretic dynamic response analysis and numerical simulation, and establishing fracture criteria.