INVESTIGATIONS TO IMPROVE AND ASSESS THE ACCURACY OF COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMIC BASED EXPLOSION MODELS

A summary is given of part of the CEC co-sponsored project MERGE (Mode lling and Experimental Research into Gas Explosions). The objective of this part of the project was to provide improved Computational Fluid Dynamic explosion models with the potential for use in hazard assessme nts. Five organisations with substantial experience in both theoretica l and experimental explosion modelling contributed to this model asses sment study; British Gas, Christian Michelsen Institute, Imperial Coll ege, Telemark Technological Research and Development Centre and TNO Pr ins Maurits Laboratory. The theoretical and numerical basis of the mod els are described. Results are given of a comparison exercise of model predictions against calculations which were chosen to test the accura cy of the various physical sub-models embodied within the overall expl osion model. The development phase of the study is also described in w hich further extensions to the models were made to provide the best ac hievable agreement with small- and medium-scale experiments also condu cted as part of the project. The models were finally used to simulate large-scale explosion experiments prior to the experiments being condu cted. The overall capabilities of the models are reviewed and areas of uncertainty in the physics highlighted.