TY - CONF A1 - Feldkamp, Martin T1 - Aspects of Assessment of Packages with Wood Filled Impact Limiters during Fire Tests N2 - Packages for the transport of radioactive material are often equipped with impact limiters consisting of wood, encapsulated by steel sheets. These impact limiters shall ensure that the transport casks meet the mechanical and thermal IAEA regulatory test requirements. According to the accident conditions of transport it is mandatory to expose the specimens to a cumulative effect by mechanical and thermal impacts. The mechanical tests consist of a free drop from 9 m onto a flat unyielding target and a 1 m drop onto a puncture bar. After damage caused by mechanical test sequences the package has to withstand a severe fire scenario. Corresponding to the IAEA advisory material it is required that the impact attitudes for the 9 m drop test and for the puncture test have to be such as to produce maximum damage, taking into account the thermal test. Moreover, any damage, which would give rise to increased radiation or loss of containment or affect the confinement system after the thermal test, should be considered. During and following the thermal test, the specimen shall not be artificially cooled and any combustion of materials of the package shall be permitted to proceed naturally. Different works from the French Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN) and BAM show that additional energy supply from a pre-damaged impact limiter to the cask could occur. This effect should be considered within the safety assessment of the containment. Thermal effects at the closure system of the cask, which might result in an elevated activity release, have to be excluded. BAM conducted small scale tests with wood filled metal buckets showing continuing combustion processes during the cooling down phase. These test results are presented. As not much is known about smouldering processes in wood filled impact limiters, it is highly complex to define pre-damage of impact limiters, which are conservative, regarding the maximum damaging energy flow from the impact limiter to the containment system. More research has to be done to develop models to examine the effects of smouldering impact limiters on the containment of packages for the transport of radioactive material. Aspects of assessment and its difficulties are shown. BAM as a competent authority for the approval of transport casks for radioactive material in Germany operates the test facilities to examine the issue of mechanical damage, combustion and heat transfer for such kind of package systems. For this purpose the knowledge from real drop tests with casks of a mass partly over 100 tons was transferred to a test application. A thermal test will take place with a wood filled test specimen with a diameter of about 2.3 meters. The aim is to understand the phenomena of smouldering under the consideration of relevant regulatory boundary conditions. The process of smouldering is described with regard to the requirements in the thermal assessment of safety of packages for the transport of radioactive material. Requirements concerning the pre-damage of packages for the maximum damage of impact limiters are discussed. Parameters influencing the smouldering process are identified. T2 - WM 2017 Conference CY - Phoenix, Arizona, USA DA - 05.03.2017 KW - Fire test KW - Wood KW - Combustion KW - Smouldering KW - Smoldering KW - Impact limiter KW - Shock absorber KW - Thermal test KW - IAEA PY - 2017 AN - OPUS4-43170 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Feldkamp, Martin A1 - Erenberg, Marina A1 - Nehrig, Marko A1 - Bletzer, Claus A1 - Musolff, André A1 - Schönfelder, Thorsten A1 - Wille, Frank T1 - Behavior of wood filled impact limiters during the IAEA thermal test N2 - Packages for the transport of radioactive material are often equipped with impact limiters consisting of wood, encapsulated by steel sheets. These impact limiters shall ensure that transport casks meet the IAEA safety requirements. After damage caused by the mechanical tests the package has to withstand a severe fire scenario. It is required that the mechanical tests have to produce maximum damage, taking into account the thermal test. Furthermore, any damage, which would give rise to increased radiation or loss of containment or affect the confinement system after the thermal test, should be considered. Concerning the thermal test, the IAEA safety requirements state that during and following the fire test, the specimen shall not be artificially cooled and any combustion of materials of the package shall be permitted to proceed naturally. Different works from the French Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN) and BAM show that additional energy supply from a pre-damaged impact limiter to the cask could occur caused by smoldering of the wood. This effect should be considered within the safety assessment of the package. A heat wave from the fire could overlap with the additional energy from the impact limiter in the sealing system. In 2015 BAM conducted small scale fire tests with wood filled metal drums showing continuing combustion processes during the cooling down phase. As not much is known about smoldering processes in wood filled impact limiters, it is highly complex to define pre-damage of impact limiters, which are conservative, regarding the most damaging energy flow from the impact limiter to the containment system in dependence of time. More research has to be done to develop models to examine the effects of smoldering impact limiters on the containment of packages for the assessment. The process of smoldering is described with regard to the requirements in the thermal safety assessment. Parameters influencing the smoldering process are identified. BAM operates test facilities to examine the issue of mechanical damage, combustion and heat transfer of packages for transport of radioactive material. A thermal test will take place with a wood filled test specimen with a diameter of about 2.3 meters. The aim is to understand the phenomena of smoldering under the consideration of relevant regulatory boundary conditions. T2 - ASME 2017 Pressure Vessels and Piping Conference (PVP2017) CY - Waikoloa, Hawaii, USA DA - 16.07.2017 KW - Fire test KW - Wood KW - IAEA KW - Smoldering KW - Smouldering KW - Shock absorber KW - Thermal test KW - Combustion KW - Impact limiter PY - 2017 SN - 978-0-7918-5802-8 VL - 7 SP - Article UNSP V007T07A038, 1 EP - 9 AN - OPUS4-43172 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Erenberg, Marina A1 - Bletzer, Claus A1 - Feldkamp, Martin A1 - Musolff, André A1 - Nehrig, Marko A1 - Wille, Frank T1 - Experimental investigations of the burning behaviour of transport package impact limiters and of fire spread impact onto the cask N2 - Accident safe packages for the transport of spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste shall fulfil international IAEA safety requirements. Compliance is shown by consecutive mechanical and thermal testing. Additional numerical analysis are usually part of the safety evaluation. For damage protection some package designs are equipped with wood filled impact limiters encapsulated by steel sheets. The safety of these packages is established in compliance with IAEA regulations. Cumulative mechanical and fire tests are conducted to achieve safety standards and to prevent loss of containment. Mechanical reliability is proven by drop tests. Drop testing might cause significant damage of the impact limiter steel sheets and might enable sufficient oxygen supply to the impact limiter during the fire test to ignite the wood filling. The boundary conditions of the fire test are precisely described in the IAEA regulatory. During the test the impact limiter will be subjected to a 30 minute enduring fire phase. Subsequent to the fire phase any burning of the specimen has to extinguish naturally and no artificial cooling is allowed. At BAM a large-scale fire test with a real size impact limiter and a wood volume of about 3m3 was conducted to investigate the burning behaviour of wood filled impact limiters in steel sheet encapsulation. The impact limiter was equipped with extensive temperature monitoring equipment. Until today burning of such impact limiters is not sufficiently considered in transport package design and more investigation is necessary to explore the consequences of the impacting fire. The objective of the large scale test was to find out whether a self-sustaining smouldering or even a flaming fire inside the impact limiter was initiated and what impact on the cask is resulting. The amount of energy, transferred from the impact limiter into the cask is of particular importance for the safety of heavy weight packages. With the intention of heat flux quantification a new approach was made and a test bench was designed. T2 - ASME 2018 Pressure Vessels and Piping Conference CY - Prague, Czech Republic DA - 15.07.2018 KW - Shock absorber KW - Impact limiter KW - Wood KW - Thermal testing KW - Fire KW - Smoldering KW - IAEA KW - Fire test PY - 2018 SN - 978-0-7918-5170-8 VL - PVP2018 SP - 84714-1 EP - 84714-10 AN - OPUS4-46984 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Feldkamp, Martin T1 - Investigations of the burning behavior of transport package impact limiters and thermal effects onto the cask N2 - Accident safe packages for the transport of spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste shall fulfil international IAEA safety requirements. Compliance is shown by consecutive mechanical and thermal testing. Additional numerical analysis are usually part of the safety evaluation. For damage protection some package designs are equipped with wood filled impact limiters encapsulated by steel sheets. The safety of these packages is established in compliance with IAEA regulations. Cumulative mechanical and fire tests are conducted to achieve safety standards and to prevent loss of containment. Mechanical reliability is proven by drop tests. Drop testing might cause significant damage of the impact limiter steel sheets and might enable sufficient oxygen supply to the impact limiter during the fire test to ignite the wood filling. The boundary conditions of the fire test are precisely described in the IAEA regulatory. During the test the impact limiter will be subjected to a 30 minute enduring fire phase. Subsequent to the fire phase any burning of the specimen has to extinguish naturally and no artificial cooling is allowed. At BAM a large-scale fire test with a real size impact limiter and a wood volume of about 3m³ was conducted to investigate the burning behaviour of wood filled impact limiters in steel sheet encapsulation. The impact limiter was equipped with extensive temperature monitoring equipment. Until today burning of such impact limiters is not sufficiently considered in transport package design and more investigation is necessary to explore the consequences of the impacting fire. The objective of the large scale test was to find out whether a self-sustaining smouldering or even a flaming fire inside the impact limiter was initiated and what impact on the cask is resulting. The amount of energy, transferred from the impact limiter into the cask is of particular importance for the safety of heavy weight packages. With the intention of heat flux quantification a new approach was made and a test bench was designed. A first computational simulation of transport package temperatures taking into account the results of the conducted fire test was performed. T2 - IRSN Conference on Safe Transport of Radioactive Material CY - Fontenay aux Roses, France DA - 13.11.2018 KW - Impact limiter KW - Shock absorber KW - Smoldering KW - Smouldering KW - Burning KW - Thermal testing KW - BAM TTS KW - Combustion KW - Fire KW - Energy release KW - Thermal simulation KW - Heat emission KW - Radioactive KW - Transport KW - IAEA KW - Wood KW - Spruce wood KW - Lid temperature PY - 2018 AN - OPUS4-46882 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Nehrig, Marko A1 - Erenberg, Marina A1 - Feldkamp, Martin A1 - Bletzer, Claus A1 - Musolff, André A1 - Wille, Frank T1 - Large Scale IAEA Thermal Test with Wood filled Impact Limiters N2 - Packages for the transport of radioactive material are often equipped with impact limiters consisting of wood. Mostly this wood is encapsulated by steel sheets. The impact limiters are needed to ensure that the transport casks meet the IAEA safety requirements. According to the IAEA safety requirements a package has to withstand consecutively severe mechanical tests followed by a thermal test. The mechanical tests have to produce maximum damage concerning the thermal test. Following this, the impact limiters may have serious pre-damage when the thermal tests begins. The IAEA safety requirements state that during and following the fire test, the specimen shall not be artificially cooled and any combustion of materials of the package shall be permitted to proceed naturally. Small scale fire tests with wood filled metal drums by BAM and works of the French Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN) showed that pre-damaged steel encapsulated wooden structures could start smoldering initiated by the thermal test. These processes supply additional energy to the cask which should be considered within the safety assessment of the package. As not much is known about smoldering processes in encapsulated wooden structures with a reduced oxygen supply the need for a test was identified. To investigate the influence of a smoldering impact limiter concerning the amount of energy supplied to the cask in dependence of the time BAM conducted a large scale impact limiter thermal test. For that, a pre-damaged impact limiter with a diameter of 2,3 m was mounted on a water tank simulating a cask. A complex system of a regulated pump, a heater, a cooler, a slide valve, a flow meter and numerous thermocouples were installed and connected to a control unit to ensure all needed operating conditions. After a pre-heating compared to typical SNF decay-heat, the 30 min lasting fire phase of the thermal test was started. After that, the expected and initiated smoldering began. The results of the large scale test are presented in this poster. Systematic small scale tests will follow to identify the influence of different parameters, e.g. moisture content and scale effects. The tests took place at BAM Test Site for Technical Safety (TTS) with its various possibilities for mechanical and thermal tests. The results of these tests will have direct influence in the safety assessment of transport cask for the transport of radioactive material T2 - 2018 WM Symposia CY - Phoenix, AZ, USA DA - 18.03.2018 KW - Type-B Package KW - Thermal Test PY - 2018 SP - Paper 18257, 1 EP - 11 AN - OPUS4-45311 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Feldkamp, Martin T1 - Experimental investigations of the burning behavior of transport package impact limiters and of fire spread impact onto the cask N2 - Accident safe packages for the transport of spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste shall fulfil international IAEA safety requirements. Compliance is shown by consecutive mechanical and thermal testing. Additional numerical analysis are usually part of the safety evaluation. For damage protection some package designs are equipped with wood filled impact limiters encapsulated by steel sheets. The safety of these packages is established in compliance with IAEA regulations. Cumulative mechanical and fire tests are conducted to achieve safety standards and to prevent loss of containment. Mechanical reliability is proven by drop tests. Drop testing might cause significant damage of the impact limiter steel sheets and might enable sufficient oxygen supply to the impact limiter during the fire test to ignite the wood filling. The boundary conditions of the fire test are precisely described in the IAEA regulatory. During the test the impact limiter will be subjected to a 30 minute enduring fire phase. Subsequent to the fire phase any burning of the specimen has to extinguish naturally and no artificial cooling is allowed. At BAM a large-scale fire test with a real size impact limiter and a wood volume of about 3m³ was conducted to investigate the burning behaviour of wood filled impact limiters in steel sheet encapsulation. The impact limiter was equipped with extensive temperature monitoring equipment. Until today burning of such impact limiters is not sufficiently considered in transport package design and more investigation is necessary to explore the consequences of the impacting fire. The objective of the large scale test was to find out whether a self-sustaining smouldering or even a flaming fire inside the impact limiter was initiated and what impact on the cask is resulting. The amount of energy, transferred from the impact limiter into the cask is of particular importance for the safety of heavy weight packages. With the intention of heat flux quantification a new approach was made and a test bench was designed. T2 - PVP2018 - Pressure, Vessels and Piping Conference 2018 CY - Prague, Czech Republic DA - 15.07.2018 KW - Smouldering KW - Impact limiter KW - Burning KW - Wood KW - Shock absorber KW - Fire testing KW - IAEA KW - Radioactive material KW - Large-scale fire test KW - Combustion PY - 2018 AN - OPUS4-45594 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Gleim, Tobias A1 - Feldkamp, Martin A1 - Quercetti, Thomas A1 - Wille, Frank T1 - Experimental and Numerical Analyses for the Evaluation of Heat Fluxes of a Fire Reference Test N2 - Packages for the transport of high-level radioactive material are designed to endure severe accidents. To obtain approval, these transport packages must adhere to the specification-based criteria of the IAEA SSR-6. To ensure compliance with these requirements, specific mechanical and thermal tests need to be appointed with respect to the package type. Typically, IAEA SSR-6 prescribes mechanical tests followed by a thermal fire test as part of a cumulative test sequence. To approve the fire test, BAM uses a reference package representing the original package in its outer geometry for characterizing the actual fire and its impact on the package. This serves a dual purpose: it allows the precise adjustment of experimental parameters for the package design to be approved, and it provides input parameters for thermomechanical simulations, cf. With the help of this methodology for characterizing boundary conditions of the package, temperature evolutions within the reference package can be studied in a Finite-Element Analyses (FEA). This helps to compare the experiments with the numerical simulations on the case of the reference package, but also serves at the same time for preliminary simulations with the package design to be approved. The thermal test consists of a 30-minute fully engulfing 800°C pool fire or an equally severe fire, e.g. a propane gas fire. The fire reference test is performed prior to the regulatory fire test with the package design to be approved. The fire reference package in the described case is a closed sheet 316L steel cylinder with a wall thickness of 10 mm, a length of 182 mm, and a diameter of 102 mm. The package was instrumented with thermocouples and filled with heat resistant insulating material. T2 - ASME PVP 2024 CY - Bellevue, WA, USA DA - 28.07.2024 KW - Reference Test KW - Experimental KW - Numerical KW - Heat Flux PY - 2024 SN - 978-0-7918-8851-3 SP - 1 EP - 8 AN - OPUS4-60848 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Feldkamp, Martin T1 - Combustion of shock absorber under IAEA thermal test conditions - recent testing - T2 - IRSN/BAM-Workshop about fire testing CY - Paris, France DA - 2015-04-13 PY - 2015 AN - OPUS4-33143 LA - deu AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Feldkamp, Martin T1 - Experimental fire testingof impact limiter of transport package for radioactive material T2 - Fire Science Workshop CY - Berlin, Germany DA - 2013-11-29 PY - 2013 AN - OPUS4-30977 LA - deu AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Nehrig, Marko A1 - Feldkamp, Martin A1 - Bletzer, Claus Wilhelm A1 - Wille, Frank T1 - Thermal test driven pressure build-up inside type-B packages containing wet radioactive waste N2 - In recent years several German approval procedures for ductile cast iron transport containers containing wet intermediate level waste were conducted. BAM, as one of the German competent authorities, was involved in the complex design assessment work with this specific issue. Thermal analysis is one part of the authority assessment work done by BAM in Germany. The radioactive contents of package designs which were not dried, only drained, consist of saturated ion exchange resin and a small amount of free water. Compared to the safety assessment of packages with dry content, attention must be paid to some more specific points. The most interesting point, however, is the pressure build-up inside the package due to vaporization. This could be caused by radiolysis of the liquid and must be taken into account for the storage period. The inner pressure of the package leads to mechanical loads to the package body, the lid and the lid bolts. Thus, the pressure is the driving force on the gasket system regarding the activity release and a possible loss of tightness. The paper deals primarily with the pressure build-up inside the package caused by the transport regulatory thermal test (30 min at 800 °C) as part of the cumulative test scenario under accident conditions of transport. The pressure build-up is estimated by calculation in a very conservative way regarding conduction and heat radiation. Furthermore the paper discusses a conservative approach for the estimation of the resulting pressure depending on the percentage of water inside the cask. To get trustworthy results without an exact specification of the content, experimental fire tests should be conducted. However, this paper shows the difficulties of assessing casks containing wet content. From the authority assessment point of view, drying of the content could be an effective way to avoid the above described pressure build-up and the associated difficulties for the safety assessment. T2 - PATRAM 2013 - 17th International symposium on the packaging and transportation of radioactive materials CY - San Francisco, CA, USA DA - 18.08.2013 KW - Type-B KW - Wet content KW - Pressure build-up KW - Radioactive waste KW - Thermal test PY - 2013 SP - Paper 108, 1 EP - 10 PB - Omnipress AN - OPUS4-30197 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -