Development and evaluation of measurement devices used to support testing of radioactive material transportation packages

Measurement devices have been developed to support specific testing applications associated with radioactive material packages. These measurement devices include evaluation channels, ruggedly constructed LVDTs, and piezoresistive accelerometers. In addition, a method was developed to evaluate accelerometers and strain gages in both laboratory and field environments. The results of this evaluation showed no major difference in the measurements obtained by transducers manufactured by different companies. Table 1 gives a summary of the results from the accelerometer and strain gage evaluations. These results showed that the data were not, in general, more accurate than ±10% of the measured result. It is very likely that the majority of these deviations are due to changes in the quantities being measured, rather than transducer response. This is because the transducer only measures the response at the mounting location, which may not be the same as the response at a nearby location. (J.P.N.)