New blast shield at CRTC designed for punishing cold
Safety is always paramount at U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground and all three of its constituent natural environment test centers.
Test infrastructure needed by the proving ground to conduct its inherently dangerous mission isn’t always commercially available and may not even be interchangeable between the three test centers.
U.S. Army Cold Regions Test Center (CRTC) is the Army’s center for testing systems in extreme cold, and the active support of the facility’s small Allied Trade shop is crucial to carrying out this important mission in all seasons of the year.
Recently, the shop completed production of several scaled-down armored blast shields similar to what is used at Yuma Test Center, but with added improvements designed with safe operations in subzero temperatures in mind.
The blast shields are used to protect instrumentation and equipment during tests of artillery and other weapons.
“We had a blast shield that Yuma cut and sent up here that was assembled by CRTC folks,” said Sam Porter, the shop’s lead. “It was designed specifically for some of Yuma’s requirements, and it did not translate to some of ours. It was only usable in one configuration, and was extremely heavy.”
The weight made transporting the shield difficult during the coldest times of the year that test officers covet for operations.
“Metal when it is extremely cold moves very fast,” said Porter. “Combined with slick ice at 20 or 30 degrees below zero and you can envision concerns of it sliding off of the transport when you are driving into a rough test site.”
Multiple shields means that setup crews can emplace them far in advance of bad weather, or at least minimize the number of moves necessary. The new shields also have spacers at their base to serve as guides for a forklift, eliminating the need for set-up crews to hand place them in position at the test site, another significant increase in safety.
“We’re going to retrofit the old blast shields with these to eliminate that person having to be on the ground,” said Porter.
The new shields are lighter than their predecessors, but still weigh about 10 tons.
“The shield itself is smaller, but it can be used in side-by-side configuration and laid either on its side or vertical,” Porter explained. “To say they are substantially overbuilt is an understatement.”
The shield’s versatility required additional bracing to make it structurally sound, but the construction time was shorter than that of their predecessors.
“The welding went much, much faster on these because we have better equipment than we had in the past,” said Porter. “We’ve altered the consumables we have to better match this type of work.”