Background:

The Containment Field has become the standard method of confining objects and isolating them from their surroundings for a wide variety of purposes. Some of the main applications common on board the modern Starship are listed below :

Medical Applications:

Typically these are among the weakest in use, since the likes of virus samples cannot - usually - attempt to physically force their way out of a container. Medical fields are generally designed only to create a perfectly airtight seal.

Engineering Applications:

Include the storage of material samples collected via transporter. This generally requires higher strengths, since the samples collected can include the likes of high temperature plasmas or highly radioactive materials

Cargobay Applications:

A step up from these levels of field are those used in the shuttle or cargo bays of a Starship in order to contain the atmosphere whilst allowing vehicles to pass through relatively unhindered. The atmospheric containment field of even a small cargo bay must hold against a force equal to half a million Newtons, whilst the field used on the main hangar bay of a Galaxy class Starship must withstand some two hundred and fifty times this.

Security Applications:

Probably the biggest use of the containment field on board a Starship is in the field of security. These are generally used to block corridors, keep prisoners contained within the brig whilst allowing visual checks on their condition to be made, or to restrict entry to vital areas of the ship.

Starships by their very nature must employ ultra-strong fields in a few selected locations. Whilst these fields can be many times stronger than even the ships main shielding system, this is usually gained by generating the field over a very restricted volume and projecting it directly within the generator network itself. Such fields are used to contain the matter-antimatter reaction within the warp core and power transfer conduits, which permeate a Starship.