CFD modeling of jet-fires

One of the fundamental steps in the assessment of the risk associated with industrial installations is the evaluation of the magnitude of the consequences deriving from the incidents possibly occurring in the installation. Some of these accidental events (toxic release and explosions) can impact quite large areas, and can therefore affect a large number of the exposed population, while some others (pool fires, jet fires) are usually limited to small areas close to the site of the accident. Nonetheless, even these latter can give rise to more serious accidental events when involved in so-called “domino effects”. In the present work Computational Fluid-Dynamics (CFD) has been used for the numerical simulation of jet fires due to the ignition of flammable materials accidentally released from storage tanks. As a matter of fact, computational fluid dynamics can provide an efficient tool for the prediction of large-scale effects taking into account all the inherent complexities associated with this phenomenon, such as gas-dynamics, multi-phase flow, turbulent mixing and combustion, radiative, convective and conductive heat transfer and so on. The analysis allowed to predict shape and trajectory of the flame, its length and the heat transfer to the surrounding environment. The effects of wind and other ambient conditions have also been taken into consideration. Finally, the results have been compared with some of the available empirical models and with experimental data reported in the literature, thus providing an assessment of the reliability of the method