The approval of fireworks in France

International audienceSince 1972, CERCHAR has, in the civil sector, been responsible for the approval tests to which all explosive products in France must be submitted. This role of official laboratory has been assumed by INERIS since 01/01/91. This Institute has now taken over the main activities of CERCHAR. with its research teams and the installations in Verneuil. Its expertise extends to all major industrial hazards with the exception of those relating to nuclear power and transport. However, the transport of dangerous materials nevertheless constitutes an activity in which INERIS is increasingly involved

Pyrotechnie : une évaluation des risques

Depuis une dizaine d'années, la pyrotechnie tend à se démocratiser, comme en témoigne le développement du marché des artifices de divertissement pour le grand public en France. Elle touche de même l'ensemble de la population dans des applications comme les équipements de sécurité des véhicules automobiles de type airbags ou prétensionneurs de ceinture de sécurité. En effet, ces équipements mettent en oeuvre des matériaux énergétiques adaptés au temps de réaction, extrêmement court, nécessaire à leur bon fonctionnement

Prediction of the impact sensitivity by neural networks

International audienceThe purpose of this work was the building of an efficient tool for the impact sensitivity prediction in order to minimize the risks during the handling of explosive compound

Hazard identification of dangerous goods

For long, a lot of accidents related to goods transportation proved the need of hazards identification. International regulations are in existence for air, ground (road, rail), sea and waterways transportation. For about 25 years, a committee of experts has been dealing at United Nations level on Transportation of Dangerous Goods (TDG) and recently (beginning 2001) extended its work to Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labelling for Chemicals. In this lecture, will be presented first some typical accidents occurred with different types of goods : explosives, flammable substances (sinking of Ievoli Sun transporting chemicals and Erika transporting oil), toxic and corrosive, unclassified goods (Channel Tunnel in 1995, Mont-Blanc and Tauern tunnels in 1999). Then, a brief description of international regulations and of dangerous goods will be presented. Comments will be given on classification methods and procedures

Evaluation des produits émis lors d'incendies accidentels de substances dangereuses

International audienceL'evaluation de l'inflammabilite, l'explosibilite et la toxicite de substances dangereuses peut conduire à un classement. Diverses methodes de laboratoire sont utilisees et retenues dans des normes et reglementations, nationales et internationales. Les methodes indiquees dans les recommandations de l'ONU pour le transport des matieres dangereuses et les Directives de la Commission Economique Europeenne (84/449 et 82/501) sont d'abord examinees. Sur l'aspect de l'emission de produits toxiques lors d'incendies accidentels, divers sinistres importants mettant en jeu des engrais ou des produits phytosanitaires ont montre les limitations de l'evaluation basee sur des methodes de laboratoire. Par contre, des essais en grand dans une galerie d' incendie de 50 m de long et 10 m2 de section ont permis d'effectuer des bilans massiques et chimiques globaux de l'incendie d'engrais ternaires NPK et de produits agropharmaceutiques, et d'evaluer les impacts thermiques. Ces travaux ont mis en evidence les differences de comportement dans la combustion des produits ä l'echelle du laboratoire et en grand, et le rôle de leur conditionnement

Comparing three approaches of spatial disaggregation of legacy soil maps based on 1 DSMART algorithm

Enhancing the spatial resolution of pedological information is a great challenge in the field of Digital Soil 34 Mapping (DSM). Several techniques have emerged to disaggregate conventional soil maps initially 35 available at coarser spatial resolution than required for solving environmental and agricultural issues. At the 36 regional level, polygon maps represent soil cover as a tessellation of polygons defining Soil Map Units 37 (SMU), where each SMU can include one or several Soil Type Units (STU) with given proportions derived 38 from expert knowledge. Such polygon maps can be disaggregated at finer spatial resolution by machine 39 learning algorithms using the Disaggregation and Harmonisation of Soil Map Units Through Resampled 40 Classification Trees (DSMART) algorithm. This study aimed to compare three approaches of spatial 41 disaggregation of legacy soil maps based on DSMART decision trees to test the hypothesis that the 42 disaggregation of soil landscape distribution rules may improve the accuracy of the resulting soil maps. 43 Overall, two modified DSMART algorithm (DSMART with extra soil profiles, DSMART with soil 44 landscape relationships) and the original DSMART algorithm were tested. The quality of disaggregated soil 45 maps at 50 m resolution was assessed over a large study area (6,775 km2) using an external validation based 46 on independent 135 soil profiles selected by probability sampling, 755 legacy soil profiles and existing 47 detailed 1:25,000 soil maps. Pairwise comparisons were also performed, using Shannon entropy measure, 48 to spatially locate differences between disaggregated maps. The main results show that adding soil landscape 49 relationships in the disaggregation process enhances the performance of prediction of soil type distribution. 50 Considering the three most probable STU and using 135 independent soil profiles, the overall accuracy 51 measures are: 19.8 % for DSMART with expert rules against 18.1 % for the original DSMART and 16.9 % 52 for DSMART with extra soil profiles. These measures were almost twofold higher when validated using 53 3x3 windows. They achieved 28.5% for DSMART with soil landscape relationships, 25.3% and 21% for 54 original DSMART and DSMART with extra soil observations, respectively. In general, adding soil 55 landscape relationships as well as extra soil observations constraints the model to predict a specific STU 56 that can occur in specific environmental conditions. Thus, including global soil landscape expert rules in 57 the DSMART algorithm is crucial to obtain consistent soil maps with clear internal disaggregation of SMU 58 across the landscape

Landscape design for soil conservation under land use and climate change

International audienceSoils and landscapes evolve simultaneously. Soil evolution is controlled by redistribution and transformation processes influenced by topographic and climatic parameters, with also a major contribution of management strategies. The perennial landscape features have a strong influence on soil spatial distribution (geometry) and soil genesis. Building landscapes which enhance soil resilience to degradation processes and increase soil services appears as a promising way to adapt to forthcoming climatic and land use evolutions. The presentation aims to synthetize major results from a research program nicknamed Landsoil which focused on the evolution of agricultural soils over medium time scales (decades to centuries) in relation to changing conditions of land use and climate. Precise study of the soil 3D organization in three contrasted landscapes (Brittany, Touraine, Languedoc-Roussillon) enabled to link soil redistribution in space to landscape components (field geometry, hedges or ditches network) and their past evolution. A dynamic and high resolution spatial modeling approach was developed coupling erosion processes and soil organic matter evolution and was calibrated over past evolution using dating techniques (Cs137, C14, OSL). The resulting Landsoil model was afterwards applied in a prospective manner under different scenarios of land use and climate change over the 21th century. Indicators of soil vulnerability and soil resilience were defined and tested by the comparison of several prospective scenarios applied on a same landscape and by comparison of the contrasted landscapes

Gap tests : comparison between UN gap test and card gap test

International audienceThe final test, of French origin, is also used for the risk classification of pyrotechnic establishments for the application of the regulations governing safety at work (protection of workers). In practice this means that in France, for the classification of transport and pyrotechnic establishments, two tests must be carried out (the "UN gap test" and the "detonation initiation test through a barrier"), instead ofonly one (the detonation initiation test through a barrier)

Certification of pyrotechnic articles for vehicles according to the EU directive 2007/23/EC on the placing on the market of pyrotechnic articles

International audienceOn May 23, 2007 the European Parliament and the Council adopted the Directive 2007/23/EC [1] on the placing on the market of pyrotechnic articles. Following the "new approach" this Directive aims at ensuring the f ree movement of such products within the European Union (EU), improving safety of both consumers and professionals and implementing harmonized safety requirements for these articles in all Member States. Therefore a European frame for the approval of pyrotechnic articles for vehicles is now set up by introducing harmonized Essential Safety Requirements (ESR), CE marking and certification procedures. For manufacturers and importers that had to comply with a different regulation in each country to get technical approvals of their products the principle "tested once, accepted everywhere" is a great achievement. Although this EU directive will reduce the administrative burden for everybody, its substitution and application instead of the current national regulations may create difficulties at the beginning. As Notified Body and Official Laboratory in France INERIS has gained lot of experience in testing, certifying and approving explosives and pyrotechnic articles. In this paper we give an insight of the different parts of the Directive 2007/23/EC and present the frame of the CE marking and certification procedures for pyrotechnic articles for vehicles