The Design and Analysis of a Containment Vacuum and Pressure Vessel System

A nested confinement (inner) and containment (outer) vessel system is under development to conduct small shock-physics experiments in a high-speed proton imaging facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The dual vessel system is necessary to serve as a qualified confinement system and containment buffer boundary between a high explosives experiment and the environment. The paper describes the preliminary engineering design and analyses that have been performed on the outer containment pressure vessel, following ASME BPVC Sect. VIII Div. 1, for both pressure and vacuum conditions. Other engineering attributes which will be presented include an internal support structure for a nested inner vessel, an external integrated support and alignment structure for the complete vessel system, and the vacuum and gas handling equipment.