Eventos Anais de eventos
COBEM 2021
26th International Congress of Mechanical Engineering
CFD Estimation of Safety Distances from Pool Fires
Submission Author:
Marcelo André Cordeiro da Silva , RJ
Co-Authors:
Marcelo André Cordeiro da Silva, Norberto Mangiavacchi
Presenter: Marcelo André Cordeiro da Silva
doi://10.26678/ABCM.COBEM2021.COB2021-1605
Abstract
The storage of liquid fuels in aboveground storage tanks is a typical activity in oil refineries and in fuel terminals, with gasoline being one of the most used fuels. This kind of storage offers a risk of fire due to tank leakage, which can cause pool fire, flash fire and fireball. In this paper the heat flux due to thermal radiation caused by pool fire due to leakage of gasoline is analyzed. The pool fire modeling and radiative heat flux calculation as a function of the fire distance were performed by Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). In this paper, three basic pool fire models are studied: without a tank, with horizontal and with vertical tank. For each model two simulations were performed, one not considering wind and another considering wind. This paper aims to determine the safety distances from pool fires. Distances from pool fire considering impact of the heat flux by radiation on human are found for, where radiative heat flux is 5 kW/m² (capable of causing second degree burn) and where radiative heat flux cause death probability of 1%. Safety distance curves were determined. The methodology applied in this study consists in simulate pool fire scenarios to analyze and predict safety distances using CFD program Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS); Smoke View (SMV), a program used to view FDS simulations; Pyrosim, a graphical user interface for FDS and SMV and; Matlab. The FDS simulation results were used to compute and plot, using Matlab, safety distance values and curves from the fire. Six pool fires simulations, considering a time period of 60 s of fire for different scenarios, were performed. The results obtained from FDS for the radiation in the above cases were processed using Matlab program to obtain the maximum distance reached by the radiative heat flux from pool fire at the levels of interest. Contour curves of the radiative heat flux from pool fire at the levels of interest were also obtained. The application of CFD for fire modeling and simulation is shown to be a viable and advantageous method for providing more realistic results. The use of CFD makes possible to work in detail the influences of geometry, mass, momentum and energy transport in the simulations of the models. The results obtained from CFD can be processed to provide accurate data about physical effects of fire scenarios.
Keywords
CFD, FDS, pool fire, Pyrosim, radiative heat flux modeling
