AN EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE FOR MEASURING ACCELERATIONS AND STRAINS FROM A TIE DOWN SYSTEM OF A HEAVY NUCLEAR TRANSPORT PACKAGE DURING A RAIL JOURNEY

The transportation of nuclear waste and new nuclear fuel is an important aspect in sustaining the generation of electricity by nuclear power. The design of packages that satisfy regulatory requirements for normal operating and accident conditions is a complex engineering challenge. The ancillary equipment used to constrain the packages to their conveyance, a tie down system, is part of a multi component system used to transport packages. Traditionally, the individual components of the transport system have been designed in isolation. This approach does not account for the interaction between components of the system such as the conveyance, tie down system and package. The current design process for tie down systems is well established but due to its heuristic development, suffers from uncertainties over which loading conditions should be applied. This paper presents a method for collecting measured acceleration and strain data that can be used to derive customised load cases for the design of tie down systems during rail transportation. The data was collected from a tie down system that restrained an empty package, weighing 99.7 tonnes during a routine rail journey from Barrow-in-Furness to Sellafield. Furthermore, the data can be used to validate modern computer models, allowing for the development of the previously described holistic approach to tie down system design. The results are unique because an ensemble of acceleration and strain time histories from a transport system laden with a nuclear package is unprecedented. A visual examination indicates that this tie down system was subjected to low magnitude accelerations. The measurement points also show that the general trend of acceleration levels is highest nearest the track and is attenuated by the package. The implications for the design of tie down systems are that two potential failure modes, fatigue and static strength, have been identified. The data provides scope for customising accurate static strength and fatigue calculations using modern computational techniques. This allows for the safety margins inherent in new designs to be determined and optimised design solutions made possible.