GA-4/GA-9 Honeycomb Impact Limiter Tests*

General Atomics (GA) is under contract to the U.S. Department of Energy, Field Office, Idaho, to develop two legal weight truck casks for transportation of spent nuclear fuel. This development project supports the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management mission goal to develop a safe and efficient transportation system. The GA-4 and GA-9 Casks transport four pressurized-water-reactor (PWR) and nine boiling-water-reactor (BWR) spent fuel assemblies, respectively. The GA-4 and GA-9 Casks have similar designs. They both are long (the GA-9 is a little longer) and have square cross-sections with rounded corners. At each end is an aluminum honeycomb impact limiter to absorb energy and limit forces during impact. To evaluate the effectiveness of the impact limiters, GA performed a test program to obtain data on the behavior of the impact limiters over the range of impact angles.