For over four decades, our experimental work has fueled innovation, validated design practices, and spurred the growth of new analytical techniques worldwide. We are at the forefront of research on blast effects, process safety, and structural response to impulsive loading. To maintain this position, we operate two large-scale test facilities: the Wilfred E. Baker Test Facility located in La Vernia, Texas, and the Box Canyon Test Facility near Uvalde, Texas. We also operate a metallurgical and combustion laboratory in our San Antonio corporate office.
Wilfred E. Baker Test Facility
The 160-acre Wilfred E. Baker test facility is located 30 miles southeast of San Antonio and includes a 9,800 sq. ft. high-bay test building, which houses one of the largest and most fully featured Shock Tubes in the world. The WEBTF is the home of multidisciplinary testing teams evaluating high-speed projectile behavior, flammable material dispersion, and jet fire. The teams here also conduct custom/specialty testing and experiments for clients worldwide, including litigation support. Full engineering consulting services are available.
BakerRisk can design custom testing and evaluation solutions leveraging these resources for the most demanding and complex test programs, including product development.
Box Canyon Test Facility
The 2,300-acre Box Canyon Test Facility (BCTF), named for its unique topography, is located about 100 miles west of San Antonio, Texas in Kinney County. The BCTF is BakerRisk’s largest test facility and supports vapor cloud explosion (VCE) tests, deflagration load generator (DLG) tests, and many other one-off type tests (e.g., jet fire, pool fire, dispersions, etc.) in support of research and litigation.
All site apparatus can be operated from our control room building. There are also large open-space areas within the BCTF that can be utilized for other potential test programs, even those with high hazard potential.
San Antonio Materials Testing Lab
Our materials engineering and evaluation services are supported by a materials laboratory in the San Antonio office that can perform metallurgical analysis or other specialized laboratory tests using optical and scanning electron microscopes (x-ray spectroscopy, ultrasonic thickness gauges, hardness testing) plus other state-of-the-art tools.
The 1,000-square-foot BakerRisk laboratory allows convenient access for staff and visitors. It is divided into three areas: an optical and SEM microscope room, a mechanical and preparation room, and a general test room. Three NFPA flammable-rated chemical storage cabinets ensure the safe storage of chemicals and samples.
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Related Resources
Test programs, such as those discussed above, have provided significant validation of the current methodologies used to analyze hydrogen hazards. Despite the enormous amount of work done by BakerRisk, the ERC, and others to understand the hazards associated with hydrogen, there is still more work to be done.
Discover how laboratory examination and analytical techniques can answer important questions during forensic investigations, failure analysis, and root cause analysis efforts with BakerRisk's latest Webinar.
If you know your material, product, or building component will be exposed to high temperatures for extended periods of time, why not find out if they can take the heat?
This year, our process safety testing team designed and constructed a new test rig at our Wilfred E. Baker Test Facility (WEBTF)! This appropriately named “Cylinder Skid Dispersion Rig” allows the team to disperse a variety of gases without previously required modifications to our existing rigs.
For 25 years, our shock tube testing has enabled us to understand how structures respond to blast loads and, more importantly, how to mitigate vulnerability to exposed personnel.
BakerRisk has performed vented deflagration testing of congested enclosures over a range of configurations, congestion levels and fuels. This paper provides a comparison of the measured flame jetting distances to predictions made using standard methods commonly used to calculate the associated hazard zone. These methods include the National Fire Protection Association Standard on Explosion Protection by Deflagration Venting (NFPA 68), the British Standard’s Gas Explosion Venting Protective Systems (EN 14994) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis.
Although jet fires may pose a major hazard in the chemical processing industry, they are typically modeled with semi-empirical models that were developed based on experimental results of natural gas. In most semi-empirical models, it is typically assumed that all liquid is instantly vaporized upon discharge and combusted fully in the jet. In reality, depending on discharge fuel momentum, elevation, temperature, and liquid fuel properties, a significant percentage of liquid fuel may fall to the ground and burn as a pool rather than contribute to the jet fire. As a result, such a model may predict overly conservative results when used to model liquid spray jet fires.
The 2019 ASME PVP Conference was held in San Antonio on July 14 – 19, 2019, and focused on pressure vessel and piping technologies for the power and process industries. This international conference included over 180 technical paper and panel sessions, was attended by approximately 900 people, and had an exhibition with relevant companies.
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