Measurements of a 1/4-scale model of an explosives firing chamber

In anticipation of increasingly stringent environmental regulations, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) proposes to construct a 60-kg firing chamber to provide blast-effects containment for most of its open-air, high-explosive, firing operations. Even though these operations are within current environmental limits, containment of the blast effects and hazardous debris will further drastically reduce emissions to the environment and minimize the generated hazardous waste. The major design consideration of such a chamber is its overall structural dynamic response in terms of long-term containment of all blast effects from repeated internal detonations of high explosives. Another concern is how much other portions of the facility outside the firing chamber must be hardened to ensure personnel protection in the event of an accidental detonation while the chamber door is open. To assess these concerns, a 1/4-scale replica model of the planned contained firing chamber was designed, constructed, and tested with scaled explosive charges ranging from 25 to 125% of the operational explosives limit of 60 kg. From 16 detonations of high explosives, 880 resulting strains, blast pressures, and temperatures within the model were measured to provide information for the final design. Factors of safety for dynamic yield of the firing chamber structure were calculated and compared to the design criterion of totally elastic response. The rectangular, reinforced-concrete chamber model exhibited a lightly damped vibrational response that placed the structure in alternating cycles of tension and compression. During compression, both the reinforcing steel and the concrete remained elastic

Bobbin-Tool Friction-Stir Welding of Thick-Walled Aluminum Alloy Pressure Vessels

It was desired to assemble thick-walled Al alloy 2219 pressure vessels by bobbin-tool friction-stir welding. To develop the welding-process, mechanical-property, and fitness-for-service information to support this effort, extensive friction-stir welding-parameter studies were conducted on 2.5 cm. and 3.8 cm. thick 2219 Al alloy plate. Starting conditions of the plate were the fully-heat-treated (-T62) and in the annealed (-O) conditions. The former condition was chosen with the intent of using the welds in either the 'as welded' condition or after a simple low-temperature aging treatment. Since preliminary stress-analyses showed that stresses in and near the welds would probably exceed the yield-strength of both 'as welded' and welded and aged weld-joints, a post-weld solution-treatment, quenching, and aging treatment was also examined. Once a suitable set of welding and post-weld heat-treatment parameters was established, the project divided into two parts. The first part concentrated on developing the necessary process information to be able to make defect-free friction-stir welds in 3.8 cm. thick Al alloy 2219 in the form of circumferential welds that would join two hemispherical forgings with a 102 cm. inside diameter. This necessitated going to a bobbin-tool welding-technique to simplify the tooling needed to react the large forces generated in friction-stir welding. The bobbin-tool technique was demonstrated on both flat-plates and plates that were bent to the curvature of the actual vessel. An additional issue was termination of the weld, i.e. closing out the hole left at the end of the weld by withdrawal of the friction-stir welding tool. This was accomplished by friction-plug welding a slightly-oversized Al alloy 2219 plug into the termination-hole, followed by machining the plug flush with both the inside and outside surfaces of the vessel. The second part of the project involved demonstrating that the welds were fit for the intended service. This involved determining the room-temperature tensile and elastic-plastic fracture-toughness properties of the bobbin-tool friction-stir welds after a post-weld solution-treatment, quenching, and aging heat-treatment. These mechanical properties were used to conduct fracture-mechanics analyses to determine critical flaw sizes. Phased-array and conventional ultrasonic non-destructive examination was used to demonstrate that no flaws that match or exceed the calculated critical flaw-sizes exist in or near the friction-stir welds

The Scrounge-atron: a phased approach to the Advanced Hydrotest Facility utilizing proton radiography

The Department of Energy has initiated its Stockpile Stewardship and Management Program (SSMP) to provide a single, integrated technical program for maintaining the continued safety and reliability of the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile in the absence of nuclear testing. Consistent with the SSMP, the Advanced Hydrotest Facility (AHF) has been conceived to provide improved radiographic imaging with multiple axes and multiple time frames. The AHF would be used to better understand the evolution of nuclear weapon primary implosion shape under normal and accident scenarios. There are three fundamental technologies currently under consideration for use on the AHF. These include linear induction acceleration, inductive-adder pulsed-power technology (both technologies using high current electron beams to produce an intense X-ray beam) and high-energy proton accelerators to produce a proton beam. The Scrounge-atron (a proton synchrotron) was conceived to be a relatively low cost demonstration of the viability of the third technology using bursts of energetic protons, magnetic lenses, and particle detectors to produce the radiographic image. In order for the Scrounge-atron to provide information useful for the AHF technology decision, the accelerator would have to be built as quickly and as economically as possible. These conditions can be met by "scrounging" parts from decommissioned accelerators across the country, especially the Main Ring at Fermilab. The Scrounge-atron is designed to meet the baseline parameters for single axis proton radiography: a 20 GeV proton beam of ten pulses, 10 degrees protons each, spaced 250 ns apart. (2 refs)

High-temperature electrical conductivity of aluminium nitride

The electrical conductivity of hot-pressed polycrystalline aluminium nitride doped with oxygen and beryllium was measured as a function of temperature from 800 to 1200° C and over a range of nitrogen partial pressure from 10 2 to 10 5 Pa. The effect of beryllium dopant, the independence of conductivity from nitrogen partial pressure, and the observed activation energy suggested extrinsic electronic species or aluminium vacancies as charge carriers. Polarization measurements made with one electrode blocking to ionic species indicated that the aluminium nitride with oxygen impurity was an extrinsic electronic conductor.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/44688/1/10853_2005_Article_BF01161209.pd