Simplified Method for Predicting Impact Loads of Solid-Walled Transportation Packagings for Radioactive Materials

Abstract

Transportation packagings for radioactive materials must withstand severe impact conditions without loss of integrity and without excessive permanent distortions in the seal regions. The compliance with the requirements may be shown either through extensive testing, elastic-plastic impact analysis, or a combination of both. Elastic-plastic finite element analysis, although less costly than testing, is usually expensive and time consuming. In this paper, simplified methods for determining the impact force are presented for the following impact cases of solid-walled casks: impact on a pin, impact on an edge, and impact on a corner. The results of the simplified methods are in good agreement with the results of elastic-plastic finite element analysis. It is shown that in each case almost the entire impact energy is dissipated by the plastic deformation of the material in the impact zone.