Theoretical & Applied Mechanics Letters 8 (2018) 109-114

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Theoretical & Applied Mechanics Letters

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/taml
 
 

Letter

A new equivalent method to obtain the stoichiometric fuel-air cloud from

the inhomogeneous cloud based on FLACS-dispersion
Yulong Zhang*, Yuxin Cao, Lizhi Ren, Xuesheng Liu
 
PowerChina railway construction Co., LTD, Beijing,100044,China

H  I  G  H  L  I  G  H  T  S

•  The pseudo-component gas and its explanation.

•  Deduction of new equivalent method.

A  R  T  I  C  L  E      I  N  F  O A  B  S  T  R  A  C  T
   

Article history: The fuel-air cloud resulting from an accidental discharge event is normally irregular in shape and
Received 17 July 2017 varying in concentration. Performance of dispersion simulations using the computational fluid
Received in revised form 8 December dynamics (CFD)-based tool FLACS can get an uneven and irregular cloud. For the performance of
2017
gas explosion study with FLACS, the equivalent stoichiometric fuel-air cloud concept is widely
Accepted 18 January 2018
applied to get a representative distribution of explosion loads. The Q9 cloud model that is
Available online 1 February 2018
  employed in FLACS is an equivalent fuel-air cloud representation, in which the laminar burning
velocity with first order SL and volume expansion ratio are taken into consideration. However,
 

Keywords:
Explosion during an explosion in congested areas, the main part of the combustion involves turbulent flame
Equivalent approach propagation. Hence, to give a more reasonable equivalent fuel-air size, the turbulent burning
Homogenous stoichiometric fuel-air velocity must be taken into consideration. The paper presents a new equivalent cloud method
cloud using the turbulent burning velocity, which is described as a function of SL, deduced from the TNO
TNO multi-energy method multi-energy method.  

©2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of The Chinese Society of Theoretical and
Applied Mechanics. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
 

 
With the application of quantity risk analysis to the 18th sub- literature[1].
way line of Chengdu, China, FLACS code, as a computational Q9, as the latest version, is widely used to assess the explo-
fluid dynamics (CFD) tool, plays a key role. It embedded Q4, Q5, sion loads as part of a risk or consequence analysis [2], and is de-
Q8 and Q9 as the models for equivalent fuel-air cloud volume. scribed by Eq. (1) in FLACS:
The benefit of the equivalent approaches is ease to get a repres- Q9 =
entative distribution of explosion loads with minimum number n
P
of simulations. Vi (Ve(E R i ) ¡ 1) E R f ac(E R i )
i=1
In these models, the laminar burning velocity and volume ; (1)
max [(Ve (E R ) ¡ 1) E R f ac (E R ) : E R LF L · E R · E R UF L ]
expansion ratio are taken into account in the Q5 and Q9 meth-
ods, only the laminar burning velocity is taken into account in (F=O)
Q4, the volume expansion ratio is only taken into account in the where ER is equivalence ratio, E R = (F/O is the ratio
th
(F=O) stoi
Q8 method. Detailed information about them can be found in
 
of fuel and oxygen); Vi is the i control volume of the numerical
  grid inside the fuel-air region where the fuel-air is in the range of
 

* Corresponding author. lower flammability limit (LFL) and the upper flammability limit
E-mail address: [email protected] (Y.L. Zhang). (UFL), that is E R LF L · E R · E R UF L ; Ve(E R i ) is volume
 
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.taml.2018.02.006
2095-0349/© 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of The Chinese Society of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics. This is an open access article under the
CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
110 Y.L. Zhang et al. / Theoretical & Applied Mechanics Letters 8 (2018) 109-114

expansion ratio at constant pressure in the ith control volume, its tance outside of the fuel-air zone.
value depend on the ERi; E R f ac (E R i ) is shown with Eq. (2): The peak overpressure calculations in the fuel-air cloud zone
are given with the Eqs. (3) and (4). Equation (3) shows the 2 di-
S L (E R i ) mensional (2D) explosion expansion, and Eq. (4) shows 3 di-
E R f ac (E R i ) = ; (2)
max (S L (E R ) : E R LF L · E R · E R UF L ) mensional (3D) explosion expansion.
2D expansion:
where SL is the laminar burning velocity. µ ¶2:75
In Eqs. (1) and (2), the volume expansion ratio and laminar VB R ¢ L p (3)
P 0 = 3:38 S L 2:7 D 0:7 ;
burning velocity are the two key factors for representing the in- D
homogeneous fuel-air cloud as a homogeneous fuel-air cloud in
3D expansion
Q9 model. µ ¶2:75
The factor, volume expansion ratio, employed in Q9 denotes VB R ¢ L p (4)
P 0 = 0:84 S L 2:7 D 0:7 ;
that the part of ignitable heated fuel-air is expelled out of the D
control volume in explosion process because the Q9 can be got
in the dispersion simulation stage prior to explosion simulation where P0 is the peak overpressure; VBR is the volume blockage
stage, thus, the donation of the expelled fuel-air to explosion ratio of the obstructed region; Lp is the maximum flame path
load is ignored and its effect may be underestimated. However, length; D is the typical diameter of the obstacles.
in most realistic cases, the computing domain will not be com- Here LP is calculated as
µ ¶1=3
pletely filled with an ignitable fuel-air cloud, the deemed ex- 3Vgr (5)
LP = ;
pelled fuel-air is still in the computing domain and also plays an 2¼
important role in the explosion process, its donation on the ex-
plosion load cannot be neglected. It seems inappropriate that where Vgr is the obstructed cloud volume in an obstructed
the volume expansion ratio is introduced into the equivalent ap- region.
proaching. Detailed descriptions of the multi-energy method and the
On the other hand, Q9 only employs SL with first order to de- calculation of other variables in Eqs.(3) and (4) are found in the
scribe the combustion process. Most of the realistic fuel-air ex- literatures [4-11].
plosion process, the fuel-air flow field turns into turbulent re- It is practicable to assess the peak overpressure of a fuel-air
gime and the flame propagation is also in violent and turbulent mixture with any concentration by the introduction of stoi-
status. chiometric concentration. that is, a certain concentration fuel-
To give a more reasonable equivalent fuel-air cloud size, a air mixture can be assumed as a kind of new pure flammable gas
with a new SL1 when the flammable gas’s ER value equals 1.0, the
turbulent burning velocity ST is proposed. Many models, such as
new flammable gas is called pseudo-component gas in literat-
Zimont correlation, Peters Correlation and Mueller
ure [6, 12 ]. As Eq.(3) or Eq.(4) indicate the different peak over-
correlation[3], describe ST as a function of SL and turbulence
pressure value between stoichiometric fuel-air cloud and the
quantities. So, it is also reasonable to describe ST as the SL with a
other concentration fuel-air cloud depends only on S L 2:7 if the
non-one order based on TNO (abbreviation for the Netherlands
other variables remain unchanged (that means the same ob-
Organization) multi-energy method (ME). structed region, the same ignition location and the same igni-
In the multi-energy method, an idealized fuel-air explosion tion energy), notably, S L 2:7 also indicates that turbulent burning
scenario model is put forward, shown in Fig. 1. The explosion is plays a key role during an explosion.
based on a ground-level hemispherical fuel-air cloud which is The new approach is trying to transform an inhomogeneous
filled with a fuel-air mixture at a stoichiometric concentration. fuel-air cloud into a smaller stoichiometric fuel-air cloud where
Figure 1 shows the main features of an idealized explosion the explosion can generate similar peak overpressure as the in-
scenario, a ground-level hemispherical fuel-air cloud is ignited homogeneous cloud.
in the center, the flame front will then propagate symmetrically The inhomogeneous fuel-air cloud gets the overpressure P0,
from the centre. the initial peak overpressure in the hemispher- and the stoichiometric fuel-air cloud gets the overpressure P1.
ical fuel-air cloud zone is assumed as a constant P0 whereas the Then, by setting P0=P1 , the following Eq.(6) can be derived from
side-on overpressure and dynamic pressure will decay with dis- the Eq. (3) or Eq. (4).
µ ¶2:75 µ ¶2:7
Peak overpressure P1 L p1 SL1
 

= ¢ = 1; (6)
P0 P0 L p0 SL0
µ ¶2:75 µ ¶2:7
L p1 SL0 (7)
= ;
x L p0 SL1
Vapour cloud
µ ¶ 2:75
2:7
Central lgnition L p1 SL0 (8)
= :
L p0 SL1
Blast wave Thus, the following Eq. (9) can be derived by the use of the Eq. (5)
µ ¶1=3 µ ¶ 2:7
  L p1 Vgr1 S L 0 2:75 (9)
= = ;
Fig. 1.   Idealized fuel-air cloud explosion scenario model. L p0 Vgr0 SL1
 Y.L. Zhang et al. / Theoretical & Applied Mechanics Letters 8 (2018) 109-114 111

"µ ¶ 2:75
2:7
#3 µ ¶2:945 n
X
Vgr1 SL0 SL0 (10) Vstoi = CVgr1 i : (13)
= = ;
Vgr0 SL1 SL1 i=1

à 2:7
!3 µ ¶2:945 The Eq. (13) is the proposed new equivalent cloud method.
S L 0 2:75 SL0 (11) A series of simulations are conducted to validate the new
Vgr1 = = ¢ Vgr0:
SL1 SL1 equivalent cloud method, For simplifying the representation of
the inhomogeneous cloud, 1 m3 methane-air clouds with a cer-
In the view of control volume (CV) from FLACS code, Eq. (12) tain ER value is employed. The obstacles include 61 m-length
can be shown as following: and 0.2 m-diameter pipes for the representation of blockage.
µ ¶2:945 The different ER values and the corresponding laminar burning
SL0 (12) velocities of methane-air mixtures are shown in Fig. 2, the data
CVgr1 i = CVgr0 ¢ :
SL1 i source is from the literature [1].
The obstacles and computing domain is shown in Fig. 3. As
The whole computing domain, which is divided into many stated in Fig. 2, the laminar burning velocity curve for methane-
control volume using the gridding mechanism, is filled with the air mixture is approximately symmetrical around the axis of ER
different concentration fuel-air cloud (concentration between value at 1.08, the laminar burning velocities where the ER values
LFL and UFL). Correspondingly, the homogenous stoichiomet- equals 0.7, 0.8, and 0.9 are selected for the validation simula-
ric fuel-air cloud volume Vstoi is expressed by the Eq. (13). tions, the results from these ER values are the representative res-

0.50
 

0.45 0.45 0.45

0.43
0.40 04.0
0.38
Laminar buming velocity (m/s)

0.35
0.31
0.30 0.30

0.25

0.20 0.20
0.18
0.15

0.10
0.08 0.08
0.05

0 0 0
0.53 0.60 0.70 0.80 0.90 1.00 1.08 1.10 1.20 1.30 1.40 1.50 1.60
ER
 
Fig. 2.   Laminar burning velocities vs. ER.

ults for ER values at 1.37, 1.30 and 1.20 respectively because of For comprehensive analysis of the explosion load, three typ-
the symmetry. When ER equals 1.08 or 1.10, the equivalent stoi- ical cases are taken into consideration, one is the methane-air
chiometric clouds volume is approximate same as the original explosion in open space with obstacles, the other one is the
gas clouds respectively, so, they are not selected any more. methane-air explosion in open space without obstacles, the last
one is the methane-air cloud explosion is in an enclosed space
56 with obstacles [13,14]. The simulating results are shown in Fig. 4.
 

50
44 There is a good agreement by the comparison of the explo-
38
32 sion overpressure between equivalent clouds and the cloud
8 2 26
20
20 14 14
44 38 32 26 which ER equals 0.9 for cases of the cloud explosions in open
50 8
56 space. For other scenarios, it seems that there is a poor agree-
ment, in fact, the low peak overpressures indicate the ignited
non-stoichiometric clouds are not the explosion process but the
n
regio combustion process.
Fuei
For the cloud explosions in the enclosed space, there are
z good agreements for each ER value respectively. The cloud
x
y which ER equals 0.7 can generate the peak overpressure up to
6.561 barg, the corresponding equivalent stoichiometric cloud
  can generate up to 7.840 barg overpressure, The relative error is
Fig. 3.   Obstacles and computing domain. within 20%. The relative errors of the other two sets of scenarios
112 Y.L. Zhang et al. / Theoretical & Applied Mechanics Letters 8 (2018) 109-114

are also within 20%. consideration. However, during an explosion in congested areas,
In this paper, the fuel-air cloud resulting from an accidental the main part of the combustion involves turbulent flame
discharge event is normally irregular in shape and varying in propagation. Hence, to give a more reasonable equivalent fuel-
concentration. Performance of dispersion simulations using air size, the turbulent burning velocity must be taken into con-
CFD-based tool FLACS can get an uneven and irregular cloud. sideration. The paper presents a new equivalent cloud method
For the performance of gas explosion study with FLACS, the using the turbulent burning velocity, which is described as a
equivalent stoichiometric fuel-air cloud concept is widely ap- function of SL , deduced from the TNO multi-energy method. To
plied to get a representative distribution of explosion loads. The validate the new equivalent cloud method, a series of simula-
Q9 cloud model that is employed in FLACS is an equivalent fuel- tions was conducted. There are good agreements by the compar-
air cloud representation, in which the laminar burning velocity ison of the overpressures between equivalent clouds and the
with first order SL and volume expansion ratio are taken into cloud with different ER values if explosion happened.

a s10: (3.846, 0.004) b s10: (3.646, 0.007)

 

0.03 0.06
MP 83 MP 83
0.02 0.04
P (barg)

P (barg)
0.01 0.02
0 0
−0.01 −0.02
−0.02 −0.04
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
Run: 000001 Time (ms) Run: 000002 Time (ms)

s12: (3.822, 0.015) s10: (3.648, 0.014)

0.015
0.010 MP 83 0.010 MP 83
P (barg)

P (barg)

0.005 0.005
0 0
−0.005 −0.005
−0.010 −0.010
−0.015
0 2 4 6 8 0 5 10 15 20 25
Run: 000001 Time (ms) Run: 001002 Time (ms)

c d s486: (157.553, 0.001)

0.010 MP 83 0.006 MP 83
0.004
0.005
P (barg)

P (barg)

0.002
0
0 −0.002
−0.004
−0.005 −0.006
0 10 20 30 40 50 0 50 100 150 200
Run: 000003 Time (ms) Run: 001002 Time (ms)

s11: (3.651, 0.014)

0.010 0.008
MP 83 0.006 MP 83
0.005 0.004
0.002
P (barg)

P (barg)

0 0
−0.005 −0.002
−0.004
−0.010 −0.006
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 0 5 10 15 20 25
Run: 001003 Time (ms) Run: 001001 Time (ms)

e 0.0015 f 0.002
0.0010 MP 83 MP 83
P (barg)

0.0005 0.001
P (barg)

0 0
−0.0005 −0.001
−0.0010
0 50 100 150 200 250 0 5 10 15 20 25
Run: 000002 Time (ms) Run: 000003 Time (ms)

0.010 MP 83 0.010 MP 83
0.005 0.005
P (barg)

P (barg)

0 0
−0.005 −0.005
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160
Run: 001002 Time (ms) Run: 001003 Time (ms)
 
 Y.L. Zhang et al. / Theoretical & Applied Mechanics Letters 8 (2018) 109-114 113

g s202: (56.622, 6.561) h s44: (12.632, 7.118)

 

7 7
6 6
5 5
4
P (barg)

P (barg)
4
3 3
2 2
1 1
0 0
0 50 100 150 200 250 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140
Run: 000001 Time (ms) Run: 000002 Time (ms)

s570: (145.089, 8.029)

s218: (56.494, 7.840)
8 8
6 6
P (barg)

P (barg)
4 4
2 2
0 0
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 0 500 1 000 1 500 2 000 2 500 3 000
Run: 001001 Time (ms) Run: 000002 Time (ms)

i s109: (29.145, 7.571)

7
6
5
P (barg)

4
3
2
1
0
0 20 40 60 80 100
Run: 000003 Time (ms)

s135: (34.810, 8.028)

8
7
6
5
P (barg)

4
3
2
1
0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120
Run: 001003 Time (ms)
 
Fig. 4.   Explosion of cloud with different ER values and the corresponding equivalent cloud. a ER=0.7 and the corresponding equivalent cloud in
open space and obstacles. b ER=0.8 and the corresponding equivalent cloud in open space and obstacles. c ER=0.9 and the corresponding equi-
valent cloud in open space and obstacles. d ER=0.7 and the corresponding equivalent cloud in open space without obstacles. e ER=0.8 and the
corresponding equivalent cloud in open space without obstacles. f ER=0.9 and the corresponding equivalent cloud in open space without
obstacles. g ER=0.7 and the corresponding equivalent cloud in enclosed space and obstacles. h ER=0.8 and the corresponding equivalent cloud
in enclosed space and obstacles. i ER=0.9 and the corresponding equivalent cloud in enclosed space and obstacles.

Nomenclature References
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ER equivalence ratio - [2] NORSOK Standard Z-013: Risk and emergency preparedness
assessment, Norway, 2010
Lp flame path length m
[3] ANSYS Inc., ANSYS CFX-Solver Theory Guide, Pennsylvania,
P0 peak overpressure bar 2016
[4] C.J.H. van den Bosch, R.A.P.M. Weterings, Methods for the cal-
SL laminar burning velocity m/s
culation of physical effects, TNO Prins Maurits Lab., Nether-
VBR volume blockage ratio - lands, 2005
Ve [5] J.B.M.M. Eggen, GAME: development of guidance for the ap-
volume expansion ratio -
plication of the multi-energy method, TNO Prins Maurits Lab.,
Vgr obstructed cloud volume m3 Netherlands 1998
[6] DNV Software: UDM theory document, Norway, 2011
Vi ith control volume m3
[7] W.P.M. Mercx, A.C. van den Berg, D. van Leeuwen, Application
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