Failure analysis for cylindrical explosion containment vessels

Abstract

The elastic or elastic–plastic dynamical response of the explosion containment vessels (ECVs) subject to the impulsive loading have been studied intensively, however the damage mechanism of ECVs is still scarcely investigated. In this work two cylindrical explosion containment vessels under the different explosion loads are tested. The overpressure is measured and compared with the numerical result. The damage mechanism of adiabatic shear band is successfully applied to explain the failure mode of the ECVs, where the instability analysis for the thermo-viscoplastic constitutive law is conducted to yield a rate-dependent failure criterion. Based on the overpressure analysis and rate-dependent failure criterion, the shear failure mode of ECVs is studied for the first time, including the potential initial flaw in the meso-scale in the vessel. The failure analysis indicated that the rate-dependent failure criterion governs the damage mode of the vessel with the impulsive loading however the initial flaw is mainly to ignite the shear band, which has minor influence to the final failure mode of the vessel. The simulated fracture profile shows a good agreement with the experimental result.