Flixborough revisited - an explosion simulation approach

A literature study of explosion estimation reports from the Flixborough acc ident was performed and commented. The results from this survey were compar ed to the results obtained from explosion simulations. The simulations were done with a computer model of the Flixborough plant using the EXSIM softwa re simulation tool. The comparison showed that explosion magnitude estimate s in the literature based on visual inspection are much lower than the simu lated results, while the estimates based on calculations to a large degree conform with the simulations. The simulations also showed that the exact lo cation of the ignition source does not seem to be significant for the magni tude of the explosion. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.