Ships and Offshore Structures, Vol.13(2), pp165-180

Effects of structural congestion and surrounding obstacles on the overpressure loads in explosions: experiment and CFD simulations

Authors: M.H. Bae & J.K. Paik

Abstraact:
An experimental and numerical study was undertaken to identify the characteristics of overpressure loads
in offshore platform models subject to hydrocarbon explosions, with a focus on the structural congestion
and surrounding obstacles. A large-scale (one-half ) test model of a FLNG (liquefied natural gas floating
production storage and offloading unit) topside structure was used for the experiment. Computational
fluid dynamics (CFD) were used to calculate the overpressure loads in explosions with varying degrees of
structural congestion. The overpressure loads tended to be more significant with the increase in structural
congestion because the ventilation of exploded gas was retarded due to the obstacles presented by congested
structural elements. Also, the overpressure loads with the surrounding structures are much larger
than those without them. Details about the test database are documented to provide a useful reference for
other researchers to validate numerical and theoretical methods.