TY - THES A1 - Lengas, Nikolaos T1 - Parameter study of impact targets in the drop test of packaging for dangerous goods N2 - Within the transportation chain, impact loading of dangerous goods packagings can happen. Thus, a package’s resistance against mechanical damage needs to be assessed. In the context of dangerous goods transport, drop tests are used for damage assessment as a part of packaging approval. Hence, a horizontal, flat unyielding surface must be provided to ensure maximum damage on impact and univocal test results. Leading adopted regulations like ADR/RID reference ISO 2248 to specify the requirements for the impact surface. The main requirement states that the impact surface must belong to an impact target with a mass at least 50 times higher than that of the heaviest package to be tested. However, many manufacturers in Germany, especially manufacturers of fibreboard boxes, do not have their own testing device with the required mass ratio for the drop test. Furthermore, the necessity of requirement revision has been addressed at UN level. It is unclear if mass ratio is the decisive criterion or if alternative design parameters can be defined to guarantee rigidity of the impact surface. The focus of the research reported in this thesis lays in the development and implementation of an analysis and testing concept for a comprehensive investigation of impact targets in drop testing. To this end, an experimental setup consisting of regulation compliant model impact targets is used in drop tests with two packaging types of significantly different mechanical properties. The variation of drop test parameters, such as the mass ratio, provides new insights into their respective significance in the drop test outcome. In addition, experimental findings are enhanced with numerical Finite-Element (FE) analyses to propose new improved criteria which incorporate all relevant influencing factors. In this way, firstly, critical impact target designs can be identified, and secondly, the kinetic energy of a real impact target in a drop test can be reliably approximated and compared to the respective theoretical threshold derived from a worst-case assumption. Thus, the rigid mass ratio currently specified in ISO 2248 can be regarded obsolete. The results of this work are highly beneficial for industrial application since they form the basis for introducing a standardized method for evaluating impact targets, replacing the 50 times mass ratio requirement. This would enable manufacturing and testing facilities to ensure a uniform level of safety assessment and to avoid the considerably high construction costs of impact targets with mass ratio of 1:50 in relation to packaging gross masses of several hundred kilograms. Hence, to make the results attained under laboratory conditions usable in practical application, preliminary investigations of the mechanical response of installed impact targets are conducted. For this purpose, important factors such as the interaction between impact target and ground in dynamic impact testing conditions are examined using validated FE models to establish an evaluation method. The investigations aim to create the basis for the revision of ISO 2248 and to define a standardized reference method for impact target characterization. KW - Drop test KW - Structural dynamics KW - Dangerous goods packaging KW - Mass ratio KW - Finite-element-method PY - 2025 DO - https://doi.org/10.14279/depositonce-24333 SP - 1 EP - 189 CY - Berlin AN - OPUS4-64090 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -