1. Home
  3. Organisation
  4. Organisation Chart
  5. Containment Systems for Dangerous Goods
  6. Safety of Transport Containers

The Safety of Transport Containers division covers the scientific research, testing and design approval aimed at ensuring the safety of transport containers for radioactive materials. This includes design examinations,the review of mechanical and thermal safety analyses and activity release calculations packages requiring approval for the transport of radioactive materials.

Our duties also include the approval of special form radioactive material and the assessment of quality management systems for the fabrication and handling of packages. A further focus is the development of experimental and mathematical testing methods for container structure analysis.

As part of our experimental work, we also perform a wide range of stress tests on our Technical Safety Test Site (BAM TSTS) in Horstwalde.

Further Information

  • Fields of expertise

    • Many years of experience, precision, expertise and impartiality in performing safety evaluation and design approval of various transport container types and related quality management systems
    • Expert consulting for the public sector, industry, federal and state institutions in matters relating to transport container safety
    • Operation of custom-developed testing facilities for drop and fire tests
    • Know-how and experience in complex numerical component stress test analyses, see Numerical simulation of transport and stroage casks for radioactive material (PDF)

  • Main activities

    • Testing and evaluation of container integrity and sealing system function under operating conditions as well as effects of hypothetical severe accidents
    • Research on safety-related scientific methods for experimental and analytical container stress tests and on safety margins

  • Range of services/technical equipment

    Test facilities at the BAM Test Site for Technical Safety

    • Drop test facility with detaching device for max. 200 t and max. drop height up to 30 m on unyielding 2.600 t foundation, attached assembly hall with 80 t overhead crane
    • Test facility for guided drop tests up to 1,000 kg and a max. drop height of 12 m. Drop weight interception system to prevent a secondary impact

    • Fire test facility with propane as fuel with a mean heat flux of 110 kW/m² for test objects with a max. mass of 200 t

      Temperature-controlled testing and assembly hall with a total area of about 850 m² and a 50 t overhead crane

    Test and measurement technologies

    • Measuring equipment for experimental stress and strain plus acceleration analyses for high-dynamic stressed test objects
    • Application-specific leakage testing according to the state of the art
      Laboratory leakage testing (PDF)
    • High-speed camera systems for recording and analysis of high dynamic processes
    • Optical 3D measuring methods for measuring and analysing shape changes and comparisons with CAD data
    • Hard and software (ABAQUS, ANSYS, LS-DYNA) for stress analyses using the finite element method

    Find more information in our brochure Experimental testing of containers for radioactive material (PDF) and on BAM's Portal TES - Technical Safety

  • Publications of the division

    In the database PUBLICA you will find publications by BAM employees.

    Publications of the division Safety of Transport Containers in PUBLICA

    PUBLICA

Contact Dr.-Ing. Frank Wille

Head of Division 3.3

Branch Fabeckstraße

Phone +49 30 8104-1330

Email