Drop Test Program with a HLW Cask Model - Performance, Measurements and Results

BAM (Federal Institute for Material Research and Testing) is the competent authority for mechanical and thermal safety assessment of transport packages for spent fuel and high level waste (HLW) in Germany. In context with package design approval of the new German HLW cask CASTOR HAW28M, BAM performed several drop tests with a half-scale model of the CASTOR HAW/TB2. The test model was manufactured by GNS (Gesellschaft fur Nuklear Service mbH) and tested under accident transport conditions on the 200 tons BAM drop test facility at the BAM Test Site Technical Safety. For this comprehensive test program the test specimen CASTOR HAW/TB2 was instrumented at 21 measurement planes with altogether 23 piezo-resistive accelerometers, five temperature sensors and 131 tri-axial strain gauges in the container interior and exterior, respectively. The strains of four representative lid bolts were recorded by four uniaxial strain gauges per each bolt. Helium leakage rate measurements were performed before and after each test in the above noted testing sequence. The paper presents some experimental results of the half-scale CASTOR HAW/TB2 prototype (14,500 kg) and measurement data logging.