United States Department of Transportation
i
Rail Tank Car Total Containment Fire Testing
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2018-10-01
[PDF-6.28 MB]
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TRIS Online Accession Number:01684875
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Edition:Final Report
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Abstract:Given the frequent incidences of Non-Accident Releases (NARs) of hazardous materials from tank cars, there is increased interest in transporting hazardous materials in total containment conditions (i.e., no pressure relief devices [PRD]). The primary purpose of a PRD is to protect a tank car in a fire situation by limiting the maximum pressure buildup within the tank car through PRD venting. This would not be possible in the case of total containment. Before issuing a Special Permit authorizing total containment for NaOH and KOH solutions, FRA determined that an equivalent level of safety could be achieved if such tank cars were demonstrated through actual fire testing to meet the pool fire thermal protection requirement currently mandated for certain tank cars carrying higher risk hazardous materials. In such cases the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) requires tank cars to survive a fully engulfing pool fire for 100 minutes, without catastrophic failure. Also, the modeling tool commonly used by industry to evaluate thermal protection, Analysis of Fire Effects on Tank Cars (AFFTAC), has not been validated under these conditions. The intent of this effort was to evaluate through a series of third-scale fire tests, the ability of tank cars to meet the thermal protection requirements under total containment conditions, as well as to generate data to validate AFFTAC for such conditions. A review of the test data, followed by subsequent extrapolation and scaling to estimate full-scale behavior, suggests that full-scale tank cars carrying caustics are unlikely to survive the 100-minute requirement specified in the CFR.
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