Article: CFD-based prediction of hydrogen deflagration in semi-open ducts Journal: Progress in Computational Fluid Dynamics, An International Journal (PCFD) 2021 Vol.21 No.6 pp.343 - 354 Abstract: Explosion of hydrogen-air mixture in an enclosure produces high local pressure levels, potentially resulting in personnel and property losses. Design of explosion venting systems for mitigating this explosion risk typically involves the use of computational methods. The purpose of this article is to present an unsteady RANS CFD model for simulating hydrogen deflagration in the high flame speed regime in semi-open ducts. This is a relevant scenario from the practical point of view, but with only few previously reported successful modelling attempts. The model proposed herein has been implemented in ANSYS Fluent 19 R2, and is compared to a well-known experiment reported in the literature. The results show a good agreement of the flame speed prediction up to almost 500 m/s, and reasonably good accuracy, judging by previously reported models for similar cases, for higher flame speeds. A validation study presented in this paper shows that the model is also robust with respect to mesh resolution for small enough timesteps. As a relatively lightweight alternative to computationally intensive Large-Eddy simulation models, the proposed modelling approach is expected to be beneficial for practical power system design concerns. Inderscience Publishers - linking academia, business and industry through research

Title: CFD-based prediction of hydrogen deflagration in semi-open ducts

Authors: Eilidh Seville; Helen Scott; Iain Waddell; Eero Immonen; Bingzhi Li

Addresses: University of Strathclyde, 75 Montrose Street, Glasgow G1 1XJ, UK ' University of Strathclyde, 75 Montrose Street, Glasgow G1 1XJ, UK ' University of Strathclyde, 75 Montrose Street, Glasgow G1 1XJ, UK ' Computational Engineering and Analysis Research Group, Turku University of Applied Sciences, Joukahaisenkatu 3, 20520 Turku, Finland ' Elomatic Consulting and Engineering Oy, Itäinen Rantakatu 72, 20810 Turku, Finland

Abstract: Explosion of hydrogen-air mixture in an enclosure produces high local pressure levels, potentially resulting in personnel and property losses. Design of explosion venting systems for mitigating this explosion risk typically involves the use of computational methods. The purpose of this article is to present an unsteady RANS CFD model for simulating hydrogen deflagration in the high flame speed regime in semi-open ducts. This is a relevant scenario from the practical point of view, but with only few previously reported successful modelling attempts. The model proposed herein has been implemented in ANSYS Fluent 19 R2, and is compared to a well-known experiment reported in the literature. The results show a good agreement of the flame speed prediction up to almost 500 m/s, and reasonably good accuracy, judging by previously reported models for similar cases, for higher flame speeds. A validation study presented in this paper shows that the model is also robust with respect to mesh resolution for small enough timesteps. As a relatively lightweight alternative to computationally intensive Large-Eddy simulation models, the proposed modelling approach is expected to be beneficial for practical power system design concerns.

Keywords: CFD; hydrogen; deflagration; semi-open ducts; flame speed; explosion; safety.

DOI: 10.1504/PCFD.2021.119261

Progress in Computational Fluid Dynamics, An International Journal, 2021 Vol.21 No.6, pp.343 - 354

Received: 22 Jan 2020
Accepted: 19 Dec 2020
Published online: 30 Nov 2021 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article

Title: CFD-based prediction of hydrogen deflagration in semi-open ducts

Keep up-to-date