A Study on Safer Operation of Impulsively Loaded Vessels

ASME published Code Case 2564 [1] in January 2008 on impulsively loaded vessels, which is the first design guidance of this kind worldwide. The authors participated in the Task Group of Sec. VIII, Div. 3 [2] and were also intimately engaged in development, design and operation of detonation chambers DAVINCH^®. DAVINCH^® is an acronym for Detonation of Ammunition in Vacuum INtegrated CHamber, utilized for destruction of old non-stockpile chemical weapons, which were recovered from underground and sea in several areas of Japan, China, and Belgium. The quantity destroyed to-date has reached as high as 4,500 items. Figure 1, and 2 show the installations of DV65 at Port Kanda, Japan and DV50 at Poelkapelle, Belgium, with maximum capacity of 65kg and 50 kg TNT-equivalent respectively.