TY - CONF A1 - Nagelschmidt, Sven A1 - Probst, Ulrich A1 - Völzke, Holger A1 - Wolff, Dietmar T1 - Long-term investigations of metal seals for storage casks of radioctive materials T2 - Pressure Vessels and Piping Conference (PVP) - ASME Conference Proceedings N2 - The Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und –prüfung (BAM) is a federal institute for materials research and testing in Germany and has been involved in the qualification and safety evaluation procedures of metal seals from the early beginning of the interim storage licensing procedures for radioactive materials, stored in dual purpose casks. Regarding this subject, BAM investigates the long-term behavior of metal seals under the influence of temperature using experimental data and analytical approaches. The development of numerical models is in progress as well. Systematic experimental investigations performed by BAM indicate a continuous decrease of the remaining seal force and the usable resilience considering the leak tightness. Hence, there is a fundamental interest of describing time and temperature dependency to gain predictable values for the long-term behavior and to achieve reliable results with help of short-term tests. The paper gives an overview about the sealing principle, test program and test results of metal seals of the type HELICOFLEX® HN200. The aging effect, respectively the long-term behavior in dependency of time and temperature, are introduced for two different outer liner materials, aluminum and silver. T2 - PVP ASME Conference CY - Vancouver, Canada DA - 17.07.2016 KW - Long-Term Behaviour KW - Metal Seal KW - Metal Gasket PY - 2016 SN - 978-0-7918-5045-9 VL - 7 SP - 63596-1 EP - 63596-5 AN - OPUS4-38039 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Völzke, Holger A1 - Wolff, Dietmar A1 - Probst, Ulrich A1 - Nagelschmidt, Sven A1 - Schulz, Sebastian T1 - Long term performance of metal seals for transport and storage casks JF - Packaging, transport, storage & security of radioactive materials (RAMTRANS) N2 - Dual purpose casks for the transportation and storage of spent nuclear fuel and other radioactive materials require very high leak tightness of lid closure systems under accident conditions as well as in the long term to prevent activity release. For that purpose metal seals of specific types with an inner helical spring and outer metal liners are widely used and have shown their excellent performance if certain quality assurance requirements for fabrication and assembling are satisfied. Well defined surface roughness, clean and dry inert conditions are therefore essential. No seal failure in a loaded cask happened under these conditions until today. Nevertheless, the considered and licensed operation period is limited and all safety assessments have been performed and approved for this period of time which is 40 years in Germany so far. However, in the meantime longer storage periods might be necessary for the future and therefore additional material data will be required. BAM is involved in the qualification and evaluation procedures of those seals from the early beginning. Because long term tests are always time consuming BAM has early decided to perform additional tests with specific test seal configurations to gain a better understanding of the long term behaviour with regard to seal pressure force, leakage rate and useable resilience which is safety relevant mainly in case of accidental mechanical loads inside a storage facility or during a subsequent transport. Main test parameters are the material of the outer seal jacket (silver or aluminium) and the temperature. This paper presents the BAM test program including an innovative test mock-up and most recent test results. Based on these data extrapolation models to extended time periods are discussed, and also future plans to continue tests and to investigate seal behaviour for additional test parameters are explained. KW - Metal Seal KW - Spent Fuel KW - Storage KW - Ageing KW - Cask KW - Leak tightness PY - 2014 DO - https://doi.org/10.1179/1746510914Y.0000000057 SN - 1746-5095 SN - 1746-5109 SN - 0957-476X VL - 25 IS - 1 SP - 8 EP - 15 PB - Ramtrans Publ. CY - Ashford AN - OPUS4-32327 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -