Vented gas and dust explosions - External explosions

Abstract

The use of explosion venting is a widely applied safety measure, mitigating the effects of an internal gas and dust explosion. Implementation of this safety measure does however not eliminate all risks and hazards associated with these explosions. By venting an internal explosion to the outside one introduces hazards to the areas surrounding the vented enclosure. A theoretical study of vented explosions, along with the relation between the internal and external explosion, has been performed identifying the characteristics and effects of these. Applicability and limitations when using empirical expressions for predicting external phenomena associated with vented explosions has been discussed. Representing an alternative prediction method, the use of the CFD software FLACS to accurately predict explosion characteristics has been investigated. This has been achieved by simulating previous experimental work. Evaluation of obtained predictions has been performed discussing the ability to represent similar events, values and processes as those recorded experimentally. A possible approach for obtaining agreeing predictions has been assessed. The use of CFD for simulating scenarios as those investigated has shown to be promising, however, a continued investigation of these results is necessary due to strong sensitivity observed for fundamental simulation settings.