STATISTICAL ESTIMATION OF LOADS FROM GAS-EXPLOSIONS

There are several sources for possible errors when numerical gas explo sion simulators are applied to estimate loads on structures and equipm ent, The present paper proposes a partial coefficient method to deal w ith uncertainties that arises from variations of the location of the i gnition source, and the lack of knowledge of size and location of the exploding gas cloud. The method also describes how to take into accoun t physical and numerical idealization errors of the current available explosion simulators, The paper describes the procedure to calculate d istribution quantiles for explosion parameters such as pressure and im pulse with appropriate confidence levels, Non-parametric statistics ar e used to generalize and quantify the effect of the ignition point loc ation in several offshore modules. The coefficients to achieve reasona ble levels of safety are provided for these cases, Existing explosion simulator validation data are used to provide acceptable levels of saf ety in the estimation of gas explosion parameters, (C) 1997 Elsevier S cience Ltd, All rights reserved.