SIMULATION OF VCES BY CFD MODELING - AN ANALYSIS OF SENSITIVITY

The AutoReaGas code developed by TNO and Century Dynamics Ltd has been utilized to simulate the occurrence of a Vapour Cloud Explosion in a large fuel storage area. The sensitivity of the results to the main in put variables has been investigated, together with the effect of fuel amount and fuel concentration inside the cloud. The marked sensitivity to several adjustable parameters, such as the turbulent modelling con stant C-t, shows that the use of Computational Fluid Dynamics codes is not a straightforward task but still requires an adequate skill. From the whole set of computed results, some suggestions are derived, in o rder to improve the predictive power of the code. (C) 1998 Elsevier Sc ience Ltd. All rights reserved.