Explosives safety and blast- and fragment-resistance design for facility to combine high-explosives inspection with machining, staging, pressing, and radiography.

Weidlinger Associates is providing explosives safety and blast- and fragment-resistance design services for the proposed High Explosives Pressing Facility (HEPF) at the Department of Energy's Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas. The facility will efficiently combine high explosives inspection with machining, staging, pressing, and radiography. It will provide sections for explosives processing and operations support. as well as administrative areas, connected by an all-weather ramp to explosives storage magazines and loading dock.

The structural wall and roof systems are designed for blast, shock, and fragment loads. Laced-concrete wall construction was compared with earth-separated concrete construction in a value engineering study. Preliminary blast-resistant design configurations for the explosive area's walls, roofs, and projectile barriers were developed. Selected configurations were then analyzed using the more advanced, multi-degree-of-freedom nonlinear finite-element methods of Weidlinger's FLEX software, to ensure that the concrete was sufficiently confined and properly detailed.

Completion Date: 2006
Location: Amarillo, Texas
Owner or Client: US Department of Energy
Prime Consultant(s): CH2M Hill