Abstract
Proper design of the explosion loads is of vital importance in the risk assessment of explosions for offshore oil and gas installations. A quantitative assessment method for gas explosion loads in process modules of offshore platform is proposed in this paper. The proposed approach achieves the following three objectives: (a) defining a suitable number of leak scenarios quantitatively based on the Latin Hypercube Sampling (LHS) technique and statistical analysis; (b) defining the explosion scenarios according to the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) dispersion analysis results in the sampled leak scenarios; (c) designing the explosion loads on interested areas according to the CFD analysis results in different explosion scenarios and exceedance probability methods. The proposed method was applied to a process module of an example offshore platform. The pressure loads on interested areas of the example platform are very close to that suggested in Det Norske Veritas (DNV) codes. The method developed in this paper can benefit the engineers on better assessment of gas explosion risk in process modules for offshore installations.
Highlights
Explosion accident caused by the hydrocarbon leak is one of the most significant accidents, which should be considered thoroughly in the offshore oil and gas industry. e structural response analysis under explosion loads is a very important task in the risk assessment of explosion accidents
Where f1: porosity factor, which is defined by “1/porosity of the platform zone” and is set as 1.5 in the considered example platform; f2: pressure revision factor, which is used to consider the under predicted overpressure of FLACS code
Integrating application of the Latin Hypercube Sampling (LHS) method, FLACS code, and exceedance probability technique, this paper proposed a quantitative assessment method for gas explosion loads in process modules of offshore platforms
Summary
Explosion accident caused by the hydrocarbon leak is one of the most significant accidents, which should be considered thoroughly in the offshore oil and gas industry. e structural response analysis under explosion loads is a very important task in the risk assessment of explosion accidents. Explosion accident caused by the hydrocarbon leak is one of the most significant accidents, which should be considered thoroughly in the offshore oil and gas industry. E structural response analysis under explosion loads is a very important task in the risk assessment of explosion accidents. In 1988, huge loss of Piper Alpha platform in the UK North Sea prompted the UK government to actively promote the application of risk assessment methods in the offshore oil and gas platforms [1]. For hydrocarbon leak caused explosion, when the leak happens and is not ignited immediately, a certain size gas cloud will be formulated as the dispersion continued. If this cloud is ignited at a certain time, gas explosion may happen
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