Theoretical studies on fuel dispersion and fireball formation associated with aircraft crash. Issue 12 (2nd December 2018) - Shelke, Ashish V.
ABSTRACT: The accidental or intentional crash of an aircraft causes the fuel dispersion followed by a fireball formation that may affect the integrity of structures by thermal hazards. The fireball arising from the aircraft crash has been studied and analyzed using Eddy Dissipation Concept (EDC) combustion model in the computational fluid dynamic (CFD) platform openFOAM. The simulations have been performed with two methods. In first method, the fuel is injected in complete vapor form and in the second method, fuel is injected as dynamic fuel spray. The input to analyze fireball by dynamic spray model has been obtained from droplet spray model reported earlier (Shelke et al., 2018). The diameter and lift-off height obtained in CFD analyses are compared with a video footage reported in literature and it is found to be in good agreement. To illustrate the transient behavior of fireball, evolution of mass fractions of fuel and combustion products and developed pressure are studied. It has been found that both methods give similar predictions for fireball diameter and lifting height.