Numerical modeling of gas, vapour and dust explosions in pipers and linked vessels

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) as a tool for simulating gas explosions has matured for the last two decades to the point where it is now considered a valuable tool for quantifying the effects of an explosions in a congested (obstructed) environment, e .g. an off-shore oil and gas producting platform or an on-shore chemical plant. The gas explosion simulators FLACS, EXSIM and AutoReaGas have played a key role in this development. Industry practice today is to apply so called venting guidelines to design pressure relief on a vessel, according to different standard or guidelines like VDI 3673 or NFPA 68. These guidelines are designed based on a limited set of experiments. The guidel ines are not always consistent, and are often applied non-conservatively as major limitations are violated. CDF-tools like FLACS are much more flexible than the venting guidelines, and can model a range of parameters not covered by the guidelines. However, the tool is not optimized for this use, and lack severely validation. The objective of the current work is to evaluate how FLACS can predict necessary vent area for various situations involving flame acceleration in pipes and linked vessels.