CFD-based prediction of hydrogen deflagration in semi-open ducts. (17th November 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Seville, Eilidh; Scott, Helen; Waddell, Iain; Immonen, Eero; Li, Bingzhi
• Is Part Of: Progress in computational fluid dynamics. Volume 21:Number 6(2021)
• Page Start: 343
• Page End: 354
• Publication Date: 2021-11-17
• Subjects: CFD -- hydrogen -- deflagration -- semi-open ducts -- flame speed -- explosion -- safety; Fluid dynamics -- Data processing -- Periodicals; Fluid dynamics -- Mathematics -- Periodicals; 620.10640285
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1468-4349

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.