THE RESPONSE OF A PARTIALLY CONFINED DETONATION FACILITY TO BLAST LOADING

It is estimated that more than 500,000 tons of obsolete and unwanted c onventional weapons exist in the United Stares. The disposal of these unexploded ordnances, in an environmentally sound and cost-effective w ay, is of paramount importance. Open-air burning and open-air detonati on (OB/OD) are two of the most widely used methods to dispose of these unwanted energetic materials. This paper describes our efforts to imp rove OB/OD operations through the design and testing of a new, large-s cale, partially confined facility that minimizes the adverse affects o f far-field noise and maximizes the afterburn of explosive by-products . Several designs were evaluated by a series of axisymmetric, time-dep endent numerical simulations using FAST3D, a flux-corrected transport- based code optimized for parallel processing. The simulations are used to test various facility geometries and placements and sizes of charg es to determine combinations that result in acceptable environmental i mpact. Comparisons of the pressure and structural analyses far 50 and 100 lb of spherically shaped RDX charges show that the 50-lb spherical ly shaped charge placed at a height of approximately 2.0 m resulted in an efficient detonation and maintained the structural integrity of th e detonation facility.