Thermal and Impact Analysis of a Nuclear Flask Design
Altair EmployeeThomas Goulding, Senior Mechanical Engineer at Assystems presents at the UK ATC 2019. Nuclear transport flasks are used to store and transport nuclear waste material. When transported on public roads the flask must fulfil International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) test requirements, which are designed to ensure that release of radionuclides is not credible. Whilst on-site, the flask requirements are driven by the Safety Justification which can be quite different to those defined by the IAEA.
A function-led design process was undertaken to fulfil these requirements for an IAEA Type B(M) package. This required a range of drop impact simulations using Radioss.
Altair HyperWorks was used as a common enabling tool for the analyses. The tools within HyperWorks were used to perform multi-disciplinary optimisation of the flask, without the need to revisit the Computer-Aided Design (CAD) model. Workable solutions, proven by simulation, were then incorporated into the CAD design. This function-led process was seen to be more efficient than the traditional trial-and-error approach. HyperMesh was used for mesh creation due to excellent element control and its capability to support a variety of solvers. The use of HyperCrash (pre-processor), Radioss (solver) and HyperView (post-processor) enabled non-linear impact analyses to be performed.