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- Crack propagation (1)
- Derailment (1)
- Fatigue strength (1)
- Fracture mechanics (1)
- Inclusions (1)
- Railway axles (1)
- S-N curve (1)
- Safety assessment (1)
- Service loading fatigue (1)
- Short cracks (1)
On July 9, 2008 a high speed train derailed in Cologne main Station, Germany at a low speed because an axle was broken. Fortunately, the derailment happened at a low speed so that nobody was injured. The reason for the broken axle was investigated and it turned out that most likely large inclusions located shortly undemeath the surface in a T-transition were the origin of the final crack. Basing on that result, a systematic investigation on existing safety assessments of railway axles was performed. This results in an analysis of the production process of axles and in a critical review of existing of existing assessments. Improvements and future developments are outlined.
In the design approval of transport packages for radioactive materials, the mechanical and thermal safety assessment is carried out in Germany by competent authority BAM. In recent years BAM was involved in several licensing procedures of new spent fuel and HLW package designs, where the cask body is of Ductile Cast Iron (DCI). According to IAEA regulations package designs have to fulfill requirements for specific conditions of transport. Type B(U) packages must withstand the defined accident conditions of transport. The temperature range from -40°C up to the operational temperature has to be considered. For the cask material DCI, it is necessary to determine safety against brittle fracture. The German guideline BAM-GGR 007 defines requirements for fracture mechanics of packagings made of DCI. Due to complex cask body structure and the dynamic loading a fracture mechanical assessment by analytical approaches is not always possible. Experience of recent design approval procedures show that the application of numerical calculations are applicable to determine the stresses and stress intensity factors in the cask body. At the first step a numerical analysis has to be done to identify
the loading state at the whole cask body. Secondly an analysis of a detail of the cask body is made considering the displacement boundary conditions of the global model. An artificial flaw is considered in this detailed model to calculate the fracture mechanical loading state. The finite element mesh was strongly refined in the area of the flaw. The size of the artificial flaw is based on the ultrasonic inspection acceptance criteria applied for cask body manufacture. The
applicant (GNS) developed additional analysis tools for calculation of stress intensity factor and/or J-Integral. The assessment approach by BAM led to the decision to develop own tools to the possibility for independent proof of the results.
The paper describes the authority assessment approach for DCI fracture mechanics analysis. The validation procedure incl. the development of own tools is explained. BAM developed a postprocessor to determine the fracture mechanical loads. A horizontal 1 m puncture bar drop test is used to give a detailed description of the assessment procedure.
An analytical fracture mechanics model for predicting the finite life fatigue strength of components is presented which Combines a number of well established and newly developed approaches such as Murakami’s and McEvily's approach for describing the transient behaviour of crack closure of short cracks, the analytical (long) crack closure function of Newman, the R6 procedure modified by a method for improving the ligament yielding correction proposed by the authors and other elements. Basic assumption is the preexistence of initial flaws such that the crack initiation or nucleation stage is small and can be neglected. The application of the model is demonstrated for small tension plates of aluminium Al 5380 H321 with artificial initial defects generated by FIB technology, the size of which was fixed on the basis of fractographic investigations on broken, smooth specimens.