It had one job...

[Zed Head]

https://jalopnik.com/fireworks-explosion-destroys-la-police-bomb-disposal-tr-1847210186

[Jeff G 78]

When I was in college, We had to do a semester-long design project for a bomb retrieval robot and detonation chamber combo machine.  It would be interesting to see how their chamber was designed and what failed and then compare the specs to what I designed 30+ years ago.  Of course in the late 80's, we had no CAD or CAE.  It was all hand calculations and paper drafting.

[Mark Maras]

I'd love to see the specs for that "containment vessel" on wheels.

[psdenno]

1 hour ago, Jeff G 78 said:

  It would be interesting to see how their chamber was designed and what failed and then compare the specs to what I designed 30+ years ago.  

A Los Angeles news station showed the chamber this morning - a big metal ball that looked like a pressure cooker on a trailer.  The lid blew off and landed in a yard 1/4 mile away.  Bad calculation on how powerful the device was that they were destroying.

[Jeff G 78]

8 minutes ago, psdenno said:

A Los Angeles news station showed the chamber this morning - a big metal ball that looked like a pressure cooker on a trailer.  The lid blew off and landed in a yard 1/4 mile away.  Bad calculation on how powerful the device was that they were destroying.

Either the calculations were way off or the materials/manufacturing didn't match the engineer's design.  Either way, this should never happen.  I can't imagine that there wasn't a huge factor of safety built in to the design as well.

[Zed Head]

Looks like they made some assumptions about what they were dealing with.  Somebody misread the x-rays?

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-06-30/lapd-responds-to-explosion-at-scene-of-confiscation-of-illegal-fireworks

Officers also found improvised explosive devices with simple fuses — about 40 the size of Coke cans and 200 smaller objects of similar construction — and conducted X-rays to determine their contents.

Less than 10 pounds of the devices were transferred into a semitruck, which Moore said was rated, with its outer containment shell, to handle 18 pounds.