Qualification of LS-DYNA® for the Transport and Storage of Radioactive Materials

For 50 years, AREVA TN has been supplying customer-focused, innovative transportation and storage solutions for radioactive material with the highest levels of safety and security. Transportation and storage casks are designed to comply with stringent regulations. For instance, a cask designed to transport radioactive material may be required to withstand a 9m drop onto a flat unyielding target. AREVA TN performs LS-DYNA analyses to evaluate the crashworthiness of casks and to reduce the need for costly real tests. Such a methodology relies on the capability of the computer code to model the main physical phenomena that occur in a cask and its content when they are subject to a transient mechanical event. The validity of LS-DYNA is confirmed by comparing its results with reference results, for a variety of test cases covering these phenomena. The reference results are obtained either analytically or from real tests.