TY - JOUR A1 - Droste, Bernhard A1 - Ulrich, Armin A1 - Borch, Jörg-Peter T1 - Brand new fire test facilities at 'BAM test site technical safety' JF - Packaging, transport, storage & security of radioactive materials (RAMTRANS) N2 - Fire testing is an essential part of the hypothetical, cumulative mechanical and thermal accident test conditions that shall guarantee package safety in severe accidents. Not only for radioactive material transport packages but also for other containments of dangerous goods, international standards require specific thermal load specifications. Following the guideline ‘Safety in technology and chemistry' BAM, as a scientific and technical German federal government institute, operates a 12 km² large open air test facility for experimental investigations of dangerous goods and their containments. On an area beside the well-known 200-ton drop test facility, BAM has put into operation a new fire test facility. This facility provides two fire test stands that utilise liquid propane as fuel from a central, earth-covered 60m³ LPG storage tank. From that storage the propane is pumped via pipelines to the test stands where the gas is released from nozzles, and ignited by ignition burners. The fire exposure test facility areas are 12×8 m. Fire test facility B (with gas release nozzles submerged in a water pool) is designed for fire testing of containers that may burst during the test. Fire test facility A (with ring burner systems) is designed for heavy test objects up to 200 tons, e.g. for full-scale spent fuel casks. This paper presents a detailed description of the facility, insight into first tests performed, and results of calorimeter fire tests, using containers of various sizes, to verify the absorbed heat fluxes, demonstrating that regulatory fire test conditions are met, and that the propane fire is equivalent to a kerosene or heating oil pool fire. KW - Thermal testing KW - Fire testing KW - Regulations PY - 2011 DO - https://doi.org/10.1179/1746510911Y.0000000011 SN - 1746-5095 SN - 1746-5109 SN - 0957-476X VL - 22 IS - 4 SP - 195 EP - 199 PB - Ramtrans Publ. CY - Ashford AN - OPUS4-26688 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -