STOWING OF PACKAGES CONTAINING RADIOACTIVE MATERIALS ON CONVEYANCES

In a joint project funded by the Commission of the European Communities, the French Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique (CEA) and the Belgian company Transnubel have conducted research on the stowage of containers for radioactive materials on trucks. A search was made for data on normal and accidental transport conditions that resulted in the selection of 2 reference-type accidents: (a) a front-end collision with a rigid barrier at a speed of 50 km/hr, and (b) a side-on collision with an impacting vehicle at a speed of 25-35 km/hr against a truck loaded with a container. In addition, a mathematical model has been developed by means of the CEA Trico code to compute a frontal impact in which the 1.3-t container is stowed by means of 4 tie-down members, each for a nominal load of 2 t. The obtained results indicate that the stowage was insufficient and the attachment points too weak to hold the container on the platform. Real tests have been performed to verify these results and to look for a possible solution. Tie-down members and chocks have been defined on the basis of static and dynamic tests for use in 8 crash tests (5 front-end and 3 side-on). Different containers (low and high center of gravity) and different methods of stowage have been tried. On the basis of the obtained information, an attempt is made in this paper to prepare and propose a code of good practice for stowing packages on a truck platform by means of tie-down members and chocks.