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Fire, Explosion and Physical Effects

Hydrocarbon releases, fire and explosion present major hazards to personnel, production, assets and the business of the operator.

Modelling of the physical effects of these hazards, the response of the installation and of the safeguarding systems will assist in the appropriate and cost effective control of these hazards.

The behaviour of structures or equipment subject to fires and explosions can be complex. It is important to understand this behaviour to ensure that safety-critical elements of the facility will function as required in an emergency.


Physical Effects Modeling

Predictive tools may be used to model:

  • Releases of gas, vapour, liquid, two-phase materials surface or subsea
  • Dispersion of gas, smoke, vapour clouds and liquids
  • Jet and pool fires, flash fires, toxic clouds and explosions

  • Structural collapse

  • Impact response

  • Crack initiation and propagation

The Vectra Toolkit for Physical Effects Modelling includes:

  • PHAST, FRED, CIRRUS, EFFECTS, ADMS, SCOPE, GASTAR, FDS, ALOFT - release, dispersion, fire and explosion
  • AutoReaGas, FLACS - CFD Explosion Prediction
  • ANSYS, USFOS, STAAD - structural response to fire and explosion

  • ABAQUS (Std and Explicit) – structural collapse and dynamic response.

Fire Response

Vectra has tried and tested techniques to assess the effect of fires on:

  • Jacket and topsides structures
  • Fire and blast walls
  • Pressure vessels, piping, valves and other process equipment

Simple tools may be used for screening of escalation scenarios. Thermal analysis of structures may be carried out using Abaqus, a general finite element package. Data from the analysis is then transferred into USFOS, a specialised package for the progressive collapse of offshore structures.

The results of this type of analysis may be used to develop a scheme of passive fire protection (PFP) for the structure, with the effect of PFP being included in the thermal analysis. PFP costs and weight are minimised through this process.

Explosion Response

Vectra has considerable experience in the assessment of safety-critical structures subject to direct blast loading, drag loading and missile impact. Depending on the type and complexity of the target structure, the assessment may be carried out using any of the following techniques:

  • Hand calculations
  • Linear finite element analysis
  • Non-linear dynamic finite element analysis

The results of these analyses have been used in the cost-effective design and remediation measures for equipment such as blast walls, and in other cases to demonstrate that structures have sufficient residual strength to resist the applied loads.


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