Design Modifications to the Explosive Destruction System Closure System

The Explosive Destruction System (EDS), which was developed at Sandia National Laboratories, is a portable system used by the US Army to destroy recovered chemical munitions on site. The latest containment vessel is larger, much heavier and is expected to contain an explosive load over twice that of previous versions. The explosive rating for the vessel, based on the BPVC, is 24 pounds TNT for up to 1,131 detonations. The EDS vessel consists of a stainless steel, thick wall cylindrical body with large flat doors on each end which contains the explosive detonation and the subsequent chemical treatment of the chemical agent. The vessel is sealed with a metal seal gasket located between each door and the cylinder. A three-part clamping system is used to secure each door to the cylinder at each end. One of the design challenges for the EDS vessel is to ensure that the doors do not leak when the shock loads from the potentially very significant explosive loads impact the door. Previous versions of EDS vessels have experienced measurable transient displacement between the door and the vessel flanges that challenged the metal seal gasket to maintain a seal. To address the opening of the gap between the flanges during blast loadings, the door clamping system has been modified for this latest design referred to as P3. Only minor changes to the design were required and none to the operating procedure. Computer modeling of the new design predicts a significant reduction in the separation of the flanges when compared to a previous EDS vessels of similar design.