scholarly journals The Effect of the Computational Grid Size on the Prediction of a Flammable Cloud Dispersion

Author(s):  
Adriana Miralles Schleder ◽  
Marcelo Ramos Martins ◽  
Elsa Pastor Ferrer ◽  
Eulàlia Planas Cuchi

The consequence analysis is used to define the extent and nature of effects caused by undesired events being of great help when quantifying the damage caused by such events. For the case of leaking of flammable and/or toxic materials, effects are analyzed for explosions, fires and toxicity. Specific models are used to analyze the spills or jets of gas or liquids, gas dispersions, explosions and fires. The central step in the analysis of consequences in such cases is to determine the concentration of the vapor cloud of hazardous substances released into the atmosphere, in space and time. With the computational advances, CFD tools are being used to simulate short and medium scale gas dispersion events, especially in scenarios where there is a complex geometry. However, the accuracy of the simulation strongly depends on diverse simulation parameters, being of particular importance the grid resolution. This study investigates the effects of the computational grid size on the prediction of a cloud dispersion considering both the accuracy and the computational cost. Experimental data is compared with the predicted values obtained by means of CFD simulation, exploring and discussing the influence of the grid size on cloud concentration the predicted values. This study contributes to optimize CFD simulation settings concerning grid definition when applied to analyses of consequences in environments with complex geometry.

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adriana MirallesSchleder ◽  
Marcelo Ramos Martins

Large reserves of natural gas exist worldwide, particularly in areas in which there is no market or where the resources exceed the demand; this natural gas is liquefied for shipping to areas where there is a demand. As the liquefied natural gas is a flammable substance, a leakage in this process may cause undesired events like fires and explosions. The consequence analysis is used to define the extent and nature of effects caused by undesired events and thus to quantify the damage caused by such events. Specific models are used to analyze the spills or jets of gas and liquid, gas dispersion, explosions and fires. The central step in the analysis of consequences is to determine the concentration of the vapor cloud of hazardous substances released into the atmosphere, in space and time. Gaussian and integral tools are extensively used in risk analysis, mainly to develop analysis about gas flow over flat terrain, providing fast dispersion estimations. Recently, with the computational advances, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tools are used to short and medium range gas dispersion scenarios. However the advantages and disadvantages of each approach according with the scenario evaluated have not been widely discussed. This paper evaluates, using a CFD model, the cloud dispersion of a LNG leakage. Then the results are compared with the results previously obtained by UDM (Unified Dispersion Model) and some advantages and disadvantages of each model are discussed. This study contributes to the decision making about the choice of most appropriated model to evaluate the consequences analysis.


Author(s):  
Tobias J. Kalkkuhl ◽  
David Engelmann ◽  
Ulrich Harbecke ◽  
Ronald Mailach

A partially admitted control stage is a typical feature of an industrial steam turbine. Its purpose is to provide efficient part-load operation and to reduce losses caused by an adverse blade height to tip gap ratio by closing segmental arcs of the inlet annulus. On the other hand partial admission naturally causes circumferential nonuniformity of the flow, because the flow enters the control stage rotor over only a portion of the annulus. This induces not only unsteady blade forces but also additional losses in comparison to a full-admission turbine. So the advantage of partial admission is reduced. In order to analyze partial admission flow effects a 3D CFD model of an industrial steam turbine needs to be developed. It consists of three parts: i) The nozzle groups covering only a portion of the annulus and the rotor of the impulse-type control stage, ii) a cross-over channel directing the flow to a reduced diameter, and iii) the downstream reaction-type turbine stages. The results show considerable flow nonuniformity downstream of the cross-over channel which affects performance of the adjacent full-admission stages. Different operating points of the turbine are investigated. Circumferential periodicity is utilized to minimize computational cost of the simulation. Customary guidelines to CFD-simulation are taken into account and simulation parameters are carefully checked for their influence on the results: turbulence models, meshing parameters and boundary conditions are varied. The influence of gap flow is checked. The results are finally compared to experimental data to check simulation quality.


2016 ◽  
Vol 846 ◽  
pp. 85-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mostafa Odabaee ◽  
Emilie Sauret ◽  
Kamel Hooman

The present study explores CFD analysis of a supercritical carbon dioxide (SCO2) radial-inflow turbine generating 100kW from a concentrated solar resource of 560oC with a pressure ratio of 2.2. Two methods of real gas property estimations including real gas equation of estate and real gas property (RGP) file - generating a required table from NIST REFPROP - were used. Comparing the numerical results and time consumption of both methods, it was shown that equation of states could insert a significant error in thermodynamic property prediction. Implementing the RGP table method indicated a very good agreement with NIST REFPROP while it had slightly more computational cost compared to the RGP table method.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Youngmyung Choi ◽  
Benjamin Bouscasse ◽  
Sopheak Seng ◽  
Guillaume Ducrozet ◽  
Lionel Gentaz ◽  
...  

The capability of wave generation and absorption in a viscous flow solver becomes important for achieving realistic simulations in naval and offshore fields. This study presents an efficient generation of nonlinear wave fields in the viscous flow solver by using a nonlinear potential solver called higher-order spectral method (HOS). The advantages of using a fully nonlinear potential solver for the generation of irregular waves are discussed. In particular, it is shown that the proposed method allows the CFD simulation to start at the time and over the space of interest, retrieved from the potential flow solution. The viscous flow solver is based on the open source library OpenFOAM. The potential solvers used to generate waves are the open source solvers HOS-Ocean and HOS-NWT (Numerical Wave Tank). Several simulation parameters in the CFD solver are investigated in the present study. A HOS wrapper program is newly developed to regenerate wave fields in the viscous flow solver. The wrapper program is validated with OpenFOAM for 2D and 3D regular and irregular waves using relaxation zones. Finally, the extreme waves corresponding to the 1000 year return period condition in the Gulf of Mexico are simulated with the viscous flow solver and the wave elevation is compared with the experiments.


2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 377-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liangchao Li ◽  
Bin Xu

Gas dispersion and floating particles suspension in an agitated vessel were studied numerically by using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The Eulerian multi-fluid model along with standard k-? turbulence model was used in the simulation. A multiple reference frame (MRF) approach was used to solve the impeller rotation. The velocity field, gas and floating particles holdup distributions in the vessel were first obtained, and then, the effects of operating conditions on gas dispersion and solid suspension were investigated. The simulation results show that velocity field of solid phase and gas phase are quite different in the agitated vessel. Floating particles are easy to accumulate in the center of the surface region and the increasing of superficial gas velocity is in favor of floating particles off-surface suspension. With increasing solids loading, the gas dispersion becomes worse, while relative solid holdup distribution changes little. The limitations of the present modeling are discussed and further research in the future is proposed.


Author(s):  
James Hammond ◽  
Francesco Montomoli ◽  
Marco Pietropaoli ◽  
Richard D. Sandberg ◽  
Vittorio Michelassi

Abstract This work shows the application of Gene Expression Programming to augment RANS turbulence closure modelling for flows through complex geometry, designed for additive manufacturing. Specifically, for the design of optimised internal cooling channels in turbine blades. One of the challenges in internal cooling design is the heat transfer accuracy of the RANS formulation in comparison to higher fidelity methods, which are still not used in design on account of their computational cost. However, high fidelity data can be extremely valuable for improving current lower fidelity models and this work shows the application of data driven approaches to develop turbulence closures for an internally ribbed duct. Different approaches are compared and the results of the improved model are illustrated; first on the same geometry, and then for an unseen predictive case. The work shows the potential of using data driven models for accurate heat transfer predictions even in non-conventional configurations.


Author(s):  
Thomas Bontemps ◽  
Stéphane Aubert ◽  
Maxime de Pret

Abstract For a particular range of frequencies, an acoustic coupling between the fan and the air intake can modify fan stability regarding flutter. Previous works have shown that characterizing the reflection on the intake opening might be a crucial element to target operating points for which the risk of acoustic driven flutter is high. To do so, three methodologies are compared in this paper: an aeroelastic CFD simulation, an acoustic potential simulation and an analytical model. Each of them has a different fidelity level and computational cost, what makes their usage more beneficial at some step in the design process. It is shown that results of aeroelastic CFD and acoustic potential simulations are in excellent agreement. Fast acoustic simulations are then a good option in the early design process. The analytical model presents an important error mainly on the phase, and should be adapted before usage.


Processes ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (11) ◽  
pp. 1332
Author(s):  
Wei Zhang ◽  
Liyi Li ◽  
Baoping Zhang ◽  
Xin Xu ◽  
Jian Zhai ◽  
...  

For the simulation of a trickle-bed reactor (TBR) in coal and oil refining, modeling the liquid maldistribution of the gas-liquid distributor incurs enormous pre-processing work and bears a huge computational cost. A closed-loop optimized system with computational fluid dynamic (CFD) data is therefore proposed for the first time in this paper. A fast prediction model based on support vector regression (SVR) is developed to simplify the modeling of the liquid flow rate in TBRs. The model uses CFD simulation results to determine an optimized set of structural parameters for the gas-liquid distributor in TBRs. In order to obtain an accurate SVR model quickly, the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is employed to optimize the SVR parameters. Then, the structural parameters corresponding to the minimum liquid maldistribution factor are calculated using the response surface methodology (RSM) based on the hybrid PSO-SVR model. The CFD validation results show a good agreement with the values predicted by RSM, with liquid maldistribution factors of 0.159 and 0.162, respectively.


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