Hand calculation method for secondary impact assessment of radioactive materials transport casks under oblique drop test

ABSTRACT

While evaluating the secondary impact of transport casks under the oblique drop tests based on the IAEA transport regulation, it is important to find the most severe condition defined with respect to the oblique angle of the cask attitude during its fall.Currently the costly finite element method is generally used for this purpose.In this study, a simplified theoretical method has been proposed for easy evaluation of the secondary impact of transport casks under the oblique drop test.In this hand calculation method (HCM), only the following two parameters are required to express cask characteristics: the compressive strength of the shock absorber and the representative spring constant of the cask, such that the oblique angle dependency on the secondary impact velocity can be easily obtained comparing to the FEM analyses.The HCM results indicate that a low compressive strength of the shock absorber results in large oblique angle of the cask attitude being associated with the maximum secondary impact velocity.It is also observed that a small spring constant specified by the cask body structure results in high secondary impact velocity.The HCM can provide cask engineers with useful information for easy evaluation of the secondary impact of casks.

KEYWORDS:

• Finite element method
• mechanical property
• safety assessment
• severe accident
• transport
• transport of radioactive waste

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).