Effects of combined obstacles on deflagration characteristics of hydrogen-air premixed gas

Abstract

To study the mechanism by which an increase in the number of obstacles affects the propagation of hydrogen-air premixed gas explosions under a constant overall volume of obstacles, a large eddy simulation method was used to carry out numerically simulate configurations with different distribution modes of combined obstacles. The study focused on the flame structure, evolution process of overpressure dynamics, and flame-flow coupling relationship. The results showed that the flame propagation velocity and flame front area are increased during the conversion of the combined obstacles from 1-30 mm to 4–7.5 mm, while the flame front area logarithmically depends on the number of obstacles. The flames gradually develop from “corrugated flamelets” to “thin reaction zones” in different distribution modes. In addition, the results showed that although increasing dispersion increases the explosion overpressure, a critical number of obstacles likely exist. Beyond the critical point, explosion overpressure peak no longer strongly varies with the number of obstacles. Furthermore, for working configurations with different numbers of obstacles, an increase in the overall number of obstacles before reaching the same number of obstacles weakly affects the flame shape and flow rate of the flame front. This study provides theoretical guidelines for safety designs to prevent hydrogen-air premixed gas explosion in obstructed spaces.